POST troubles - What else can I try

[Carpal]

I've read the other posts about POST failures in these forums, but I've tried the suggestions given in those threads, except for getting a new motherboard. I was wondering if there was anything else I could do before resorting to that. Here's the situation:

My computer is failing to even get to get to the POST (power on self test).

Recently, I installed a new graphics card. I got a new driver for it (NVidia Detonator) and was able to play Neverwinter Nights. However, when I ran Warcraft III, the menu part worked fine, but when I launched into the actual game, and it tried to switch video modes, everything when blank.

When I replaced the new card with my old graphics card and rebooted, nothing came up. At first, I thought it blew the monitor, but I tried it on another machine and it worked. What was actually happening was that it was failing to POST. Here's the sequence:

1. Power on.
2. Brief hard drive activity.
3. Nothing. Not even a beep.

I've checked the speaker connection, so I'm reasonably sure I'm not hearing any beeps because it's not posting.

I've tried unplugging everything - all of the cards, all of the memory, all of the drives, and I still don't get a beep. I looked for loose screws sitting on the motherboard. I reset the CMOS. I bought a new battery for the CMOS and replaced it. I still do not get a beep.

Is there anything else I can try besides getting a new motherboard?

Also, anyone know what the hell happened? I'm guessing that the game configured itself during initial installation for a specific hardware configuration, then tried to use those settings. Still, DirectX or not, shouldn't any dangerous instruction be abstracted at the driver level?

 

[HammerBot]

Are you an extreme overclocker or something? Perhaps you fried your CPU? (Just kidding)
But with so many variables its really not easy to tell. Basically you have four components left (you ruled out the graphics card): Mobo, ram, CPU and PSU. As I understand you see nothing on your monitor. Therefor I guess it can be any of the above components that are fried. I guess the only way to proceed is to rule out some more components by testing them in isolation.
The brief harddisk activity is the drives self-test/initialisation and does not prove that there is life in the mobo/ram/cpu (The drive does this even if its not connected to the mobo). But at least it appears that the power for the drives are ok. So your PSU is probably not the case.

 

[khha4113]

Your mobo might be short to ground (touching case's chassis). Have you tried to boot it outside your case?

Good or Bad have no meaning at all, depends on what your point of view is.

 

[Jewelsedge]

I am going through the same thing right now...I have replaced everything except the mobo,cpu and mem. I bought a new hard drive, vidoe card, case and power supply. Tried to start outsid ethe case, still no luck. I finally resorted to sending the mobo,cpu and mem back to where I bought it and let them test it. Luckily, it hasn't been 30 days yet. My system worked fine for aobut 3 weeks, them all of a sudden, it started acting funny...had to hit the power button a few times to get it to boot...then I had all kinds of fatal exception errors, then after numerous resets, it all went black. No signal, just a cpu fan spinning at startup. I'll let you know what happens when they test the mobo,cpu and ram.

Abit KX7-333, Athlon 1800 XP, 256k ddr PC2700 ram, ATi Radeon All in wonder, dvd, cdrom.