8K3A+ Dead in the Water! HHEELLPP!

Warning: Long Post

Up until now i have been impressed by the sheer stability of my computer, and recently got a UPS to further my stability cause.
2 nights ago i did a BIOS flash to the 2619 bios. I also installed some new drivers. The BIOS flash was done sucessfully and i used the PC for about 4 hours afterwards, with a couple of reboots to install new drivers and my personal bios settings. nothing special. not overclocked, just hard memory timings, slightly raised Vdimm (2.6v) for stability and a reduced Vcore (1.625v) for extra cool running of the XP1800+.
at the end of the night the OS was hibernated and the PC was shutdown like i do every evning.
The next day, nothing. I would get lights, fan spin and drive activity for a second and thats it.
Initially i thought it may be the new UPS doing something funny cauz i rearranged the cables. This was not the case. No change running directly from the wall.
Resetting the bios via the jumper did nothing.
All connectors were checked for proper seating, as were the cards, memory and i even checked the cpu. As expected it was fine, sitting under my massive immovable MCX-462.
Getting a bit worried at this point, i then removed the BIOS battery and turned off all power for 15 mins. This DID do something.
upon booting up now i WOULD get activity for more than a second... approximately 10 seconds now.
Lights would come on, fans spin, hard drives spool up (but no seeking), but after 10 seconds everything would power down.
At this point i noticed something disturbing. The LED 'boot diagnostic' display which is supposed to be active and count up during the boot process was dead/dormant. no sign of activity from it at any point.

*sighs*

im at a loss here... at one stage i thought it might be the bios setting of "no bootup with no system fan". so i plugged every 3pin fan i had into the cpu fan connector with no change.
also, i got the exact same 10 seconds of activity with and without the BIOS battery in.

what is wrong?
what cauzed it?
how do i fix it?

Other stuff of relivance:
Everything was working perfectly till last night! A super stable system with an uptime of days, able to do hours of gaming or divx making.
550W enermax PSU - so its definately not a juice problem
XP1800+ cpu was running at stock speeds, but 1.625v extreemly stable, full load 100% of the time.
The inside of the computer hasnt been looked at or touched for weeks.
the 2619 bios was downloaded twice and binary compared for integrety testing.
2619 bios flash went off with no problems. multiple reboots afterwards but no complete powerdowns.

thanx for reading.
Sad Master poo + hamster in mourning.


<font color=green>Proud member of THG's</font color=green> <font color=blue>Den Of Thieves</font color=blue>

something else which may or maynot be of importance...

with the previous bios flash or so the computer picked up an unusual property.

when power was applied at the wall the computer started up. normally it would just sit there untill the power button was applied. it wasnt bad really, just slightly unusual.

with the new bios and its current state it doesnt do that. i need to push the button to get my "10 seconds of activity"

and the lack of LED post numbers worries me.

<font color=green>Proud member of THG's</font color=green> <font color=blue>Den Of Thieves</font color=blue>

Just for a giggle yank the ram, try another or swap it around, vaguely familiar to something that happened to me.
Same time reset Cmos and battery removal etc.

I did the above as well as unplugging all non-essential drives and hardware, worked for me.

Good luck bro.

<A HREF="http://www.koalanet.com/australian-slang.html" target="_new">Aussie slang</A>

I hope the Bios chip has not gone like my Epox board did.

<A HREF="http://www.koalanet.com/australian-slang.html" target="_new">Aussie slang</A>

Yeah, I think he said that in the original post.

<A HREF="http://www.koalanet.com/australian-slang.html" target="_new">Aussie slang</A>

yep. one of the first things i tried. running straight to the wall.

<font color=green>Proud member of THG's</font color=green> <font color=blue>Den Of Thieves</font color=blue>

he already did that.


<i>if you know you don't know, the way could be more easy ...</i>

i suggest you to increase the vCore to its standard voltage (1.75v) & to test again the comp with. maybe there is an issue here within the new configuration.


<i>if you know you don't know, the way could be more easy ...</i>

Great idea except he can't get into BIOS to do it and it is a jumperless board. He has cleared
CMOS so it should default to 1.75 if it could post.

<b><font color=blue>The shortest distance between two points is under construction....

Problem solved!!! and boy... what a strangly simple solution.
so simple im embarrised to tell.

what i did was power up the PC as normal, then during the 10 seconds of system activity i pressed the reset button.
thats right... pressed the reset button, and suddenly the LED diagnostic display appeared and the system booted normally.

damn wierd. *shakes head*
ive tried 4 cold boots so far and it seems to be going fine.
dunno how but somehow the inital boot process must have been stuffed up. and this fixed what resetting the bios and removing the battery couldnt.

anyways, thankx all for the help and suggestions offered, fortunately i DONT have to RMA this board

ill keep an eye on it though, and let u know of any developments.

P.S. ive also tried 4 cold power on reboots before loading up windows, with the voltage and bios set to my fave settings (1.625Vcore) and its had no problems... so hopefully it was a one-off glitch.

<font color=purple>I am the Motherboard Destroyer!
Hear Me Roar!</font color=purple> <font color=orange>*SQUEAK*</font color=orange>

One thing I've seen that can cause all kinds of crazy behavior involves just what you did: the reset button. If it's one of those cases with a reset button you have to hit with a pen point or paper clip and it's made of softer rubber or plastic, then it's real common to have that button bend a tiny bit and hang up in the case hole. That results in the reset button being in a 'pressed' state at all times. If you had some reason to hit the reset button not long before the problem hit, I would consider that a prime suspect.

===> Never assume ANYTHING <===

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