Please Help Me. Not Sure What is Going On

[jerubedo]

Hi Everyone,

I'm afraid I'm in a bit of a pickle here. One of my computers has stopped feeding video to my monitor. I have done some extensive troubleshooting and don't know where else to turn.

System Specs:

Sabertooth X58
i7 960
12 GB G Skill Ripjaws 1600MHz
OCZ 750W PSU (52A +12V rail)
GTX 590
WD Caviar Blue HDD
H70 cooling

First off, the system is posting. I determine this based on the fact that it lets off one short beep upon booting, with no other beeps. After the short beep I can also hear the hard drive starting to spin up, plus the HDD indicator light starts to blink as well. So, I believe that eliminates my CPU and RAM.

I tried removing my video card, and placing it into my main system, where it worked just fine. For the hell of it I also took an old and working GTX 560TI from another one of my systems and put it in the one that is not working, and the same problem persists, no video to the monitor.

Then I tried moving the video card from PCI-E slot one to PCI-E slot 2. Same results.

The monitor can also be ruled out as well as this is the monitor I use for all of my systems and it works just fine on all of them.

This led me to thinking maybe it was a power supply issue, so I took a power supply out of one of my systems (known working, 750W 52A on the +12V rail) and placed it into the one not working. Again same problem, no video. It is posting I believe, and probably entering windows, though I do not hear the typical windows music upon startup (speakers plugged into the green jack).

To be sure that I don't have a faulty MOBO speaker, I also removed all of my RAM and started the system up to make sure it would beep like crazy at me, and it certainly did. Three short beeps in a row repeatedly, so the MOBO speaker is fine too. This also means that in the process, I re-seated my RAM.

Any ideas? Could it be a broken PCI-E controller? The system was working just fine yesterday.

 

[jerubedo]

I have confirmed that the system is indeed in Windows. I pressed the power button, and the Hard drive started to spin up and load, and then about 15 seconds later the computer shut off. This leads me to believe that I can confirm I was in Windows.

 

[jerubedo]

It is definately in Windows, no questions asked. Now that I know that, I was able to determine that my keyboard was working normally. I was able to shut down the computer with the keyboard by hitting the windows ket, then hitting tab twice, then enter. This shut it down. Then I turned it back on and once I knew I was in Windows again, I turned up the volume using the keyboard to max. Then I hit the windows key and typed in "volume" then hit the down arrow key, then enter. If you do this on Windows 7 it brings you to the volume control. Then I hit the up key which should have yielded a ding sound, but nothing was produced. I tired this several times just incase I mis spelt something or hit a wrong key (since I'm working blind here). Still no sound. So it looks like the sound is also broken. What in the world could this be??

 

[jerubedo]

Last piece of the puzzle here. The System in question is also the system I use for folding. The F@H program starts automatically with Windows. It has been running between restarts and I noticed that when I check my F@H account, a work unit was successfully completed on my GPU at 9:00 PM EST. That leads me to believe the the video card is interfacing with the MOBO well enough to complete a work unit.

 

[danny2000]

Do you have another pc that you can use to remote into your problem pc?

 

[jerubedo]

Oh, that is a really good idea. I think I can do that. The question now, though, is what should I do once I am in to troubleshoot? I am more than sure it is something hardware related so I'm not sure how much I'll be able to determine as well as how to determine it.

 

[danny2000]

Oh, that is a really good idea. I think I can do that. The question now, though, is what should I do once I am in to troubleshoot? I am more than sure it is something hardware related so I'm not sure how much I'll be able to determine as well as how to determine it.

If you are able to get in remotely, I would disable the Bonic software or whatever it is you are using at startup. See if that resolves your problem.
You can try browsing to the pc or a Remote Desktop connection also, preferably, a Remote Desktop Connection.

Another thing that you can do is start a System Restore to a date to when it worked properly.

You may just need to uninstall and reinstall the video card driver....but at least if you get in remotely, you can try a lot of different things.

 

[jerubedo]

I believe you may misunderstand my situation. Windows is not the only place I don't receive video. I also do not receive video when the system posts, nor when I try to enter the BIOS. Basically from the very moment the power button is pressed there is no video at all.

 

[macusn]

Did you try another video cable from the video card to the moniter?

mac

 

[jerubedo]

Did you try another video cable from the video card to the moniter?

mac

Indeed

 

[macusn]

The only other thing that I can think of is to boot off the win disc, my isolate a bug in the operatiing system, but does not address the "no video" at bios issue. Are there any known virus's, malwear, or other infections that are known to cause this? I almost think that this is a bad PCI like you think. Do you have any other PCI cards (non video) that you can put in the slot and see if the slot is working.

goook luck
mac

 

[danny2000]

Are you certain that it is staying booted and not zonking after a few minutes? Did you try browsing or Remoting into it?

You tried booting without any ram, try booting with only one stick; I've seen bad/mismatched ram cause video to not work.

 

[jerubedo]

Are you certain that it is staying booted and not zonking after a few minutes? Did you try browsing or Remoting into it?

You tried booting without any ram, try booting with only one stick; I've seen bad/mismatched ram cause video to not work.

I was able to remote in, yes. No, I did not try one stick yet. I guess I'll give that a go when I get home.

 

[jerubedo]

Update: On a whim I decided to replace the motherboard and processor (since it is not easy to come by X58 boards anymore). I replaced them with an ASRock Extreme4 MOBO and an i5 2500k CPU. Upon replacing these two components, everything works again.

This begs the question, was it the cpu that was faulty or the motherboard? I am inclined to say it was the motherboard myself. Note that there were no bent or missing pins on the socket, and there was no sign of overheating on the CPU.

If it was the motherboard, what specific component could have went and how?

 

[jerubedo]

I have a friend who has another 1366 processor that I was able to borrow and put into the motherboard in question. The borrowed processor/mobo combo worked just fine. When I put the 960 back into the same motherboard the problem comes back, so that means the problem is the processor!? Any ideas?