Computer not booting Power supply or motherboard issue???

Dieverse

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Mar 9, 2013
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hey there, I have an older Pentium 4 that I use as a secondary machine. I built it going on 10yrs ago and it has been a most reliable computer until recently. Few months ago I was getting the blue screen errors, which I pinpointed (or so I thought) to be my CPU, I replaced with a spare I had and the machine was back to normal, however I noticed that my 4GB dual channel ram was no reading as single channel. Because its a secondary machine I wasnt to concerned with this as the machine was atleast running. Last week I finally decided to pull all my sticks of ram out of the board in hopes it would reset everything and read dual channel, sadly this did not happen. My computer ended up not boting up at all, just a black screen.

I ended up going through each stick installing them one by one in each slot, and everytime the machine did not boot. I reset cmos using the jumper and pulling the battery and still had no success booting....While doing all this troubleshooting I had forgot that I had purposely unplugged the cases speaker. So I plugged the speaker back in and when the computer started I was getting very fast beeps.

I tested all hardware and it seems the beeping was related to the power supply. The beeping stopped whenever the 4-pin 12v connection was left unplugged. So I tested the connection with a multimeter and its reading 12.4v so the power supply doesnt seem to be the issue.

Soooo Is it my motherboard thats gone?? Im starting to think so......

Sorry to make my storry so long, but I wanted to cover every detail just so you can see what troubleshooting I have done. And its frustrating as I want to know / learn whats wrong.
 

mjmacka

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May 22, 2012
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Not cmos battery. The PC can boot with a dead battery.

Most likely your motherboard. I don't know where you are from, but a P4 PSU in an older machine is really cheap. A used computer shop should have one for between $10 and $25. They might even let you test it in the store if you bring your PC in.
 

Dieverse

Honorable
Mar 9, 2013
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10,510
Well as mentioned its a SECONDARY computer, Im not your average user I have a I7 Mac pro, 24" imac and a toshiba satellite laptop so Im good.. i produce music fulltime and have older samplers that require PCI slots which are becomming harder to find aswell as SCSI & Parallel ports

I did reset cmos but I guess I could try putting a new battery in...
 

Dieverse

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Mar 9, 2013
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10,510
mjmacka thats pretty much what Im thinking is that it is the motherboard....Also there is a local computer store here that I deal with for my newer computers and they do electronic recycling , i actually got my replacemet cpu from them for free, so I was thinkin of going there and seeing if they had a power supply or cheap power supply testers for sale (seen a few on ebay).

if its the power supply i dont mind buyin a new one..if its the motherboard then im just gonna recycle the tower.