- Mar 6, 2007
- 23
- 0
- 18,510
Currently troubleshooting my main PC and I think I've exhausted all possibilities though if anyone has any other ideas that would be great.
Yesterday all attached USB devices except the mouse started disabling/enabling rapidly over and over, complete with the windows "bing-bong" sounds. Shut down the machine, unplugged everything and started trying the devices one by one and in all my different USB ports. No joy. Tried one device in my flatmates machine and it worked fine.
The fact that the mouse still worked (and an external USB hub I plugged in) led me to suspect software fault as opposed to hardware as the machine was badly in need of a formatting anyway. Before I got down to the process of backing up and reinstalling I decided to open up the case and give things a look. As I had some issues before with the front panel speaker/mic ports (why do those things always break? was less than year before they died on this one)
So I unplugged the front panel USB ports and one set of USB ports in an expansion slot to rule them out. Suddenly the machine wont boot. Not a twitch from a fan, no POST beeps, nothing. However the on-motherboard power and reset switches still light up when power is supplied.
So I stripped it back to the base essentials: CPU,PSU,GFX,RAM. Still nothing. Got out my multimeter and tested the PSU and it checks out. So I guess I'm looking at a dead mobo. I reseated the GFX card and RAM. Tried various configurations of sticks in different slots and visually inspected the motherboard (at least where I could) for blown capacitors and they all seem fine, though that's obviously not conclusive.
The machine is several years old now I should probably also state.
I have also gone through the thread here: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/261145-31-perform-steps-posting-post-boot-video-problems
At this stage I suspect that I messed up and fried the motherboard myself somehow. The machine was working fine except for the USB issues, I shut it down, unplugged some things and then it was dead, I couldn't find my anti-static strap so I suspect I discharged into it somehow and killed it.
So anybody any ideas as to anything else I can check before I start spending money?
Yesterday all attached USB devices except the mouse started disabling/enabling rapidly over and over, complete with the windows "bing-bong" sounds. Shut down the machine, unplugged everything and started trying the devices one by one and in all my different USB ports. No joy. Tried one device in my flatmates machine and it worked fine.
The fact that the mouse still worked (and an external USB hub I plugged in) led me to suspect software fault as opposed to hardware as the machine was badly in need of a formatting anyway. Before I got down to the process of backing up and reinstalling I decided to open up the case and give things a look. As I had some issues before with the front panel speaker/mic ports (why do those things always break? was less than year before they died on this one)
So I unplugged the front panel USB ports and one set of USB ports in an expansion slot to rule them out. Suddenly the machine wont boot. Not a twitch from a fan, no POST beeps, nothing. However the on-motherboard power and reset switches still light up when power is supplied.
So I stripped it back to the base essentials: CPU,PSU,GFX,RAM. Still nothing. Got out my multimeter and tested the PSU and it checks out. So I guess I'm looking at a dead mobo. I reseated the GFX card and RAM. Tried various configurations of sticks in different slots and visually inspected the motherboard (at least where I could) for blown capacitors and they all seem fine, though that's obviously not conclusive.
The machine is several years old now I should probably also state.
I have also gone through the thread here: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/261145-31-perform-steps-posting-post-boot-video-problems
At this stage I suspect that I messed up and fried the motherboard myself somehow. The machine was working fine except for the USB issues, I shut it down, unplugged some things and then it was dead, I couldn't find my anti-static strap so I suspect I discharged into it somehow and killed it.
So anybody any ideas as to anything else I can check before I start spending money?
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