PC - Won't boot?

Plekto · Post by **Plekto** » Tue Jun 10, 2008 10:05 am

My Ex's PC is apparently dead.

- System turns on, PS appears to be fine - fans and drives and such spin up and the green LED on the motherboard is on.
- No beeping/error codes, no bios, no anything. No power to USB either. I looked and can't find any burnt components or blown caps. It was running fine and then it just shut off/bricked with no warning. Not being hammered either - just surfing the web and - black screen.

I'm trying to figure out whether a dead CPU or dead CMOS/MB would cause this sort of behavior(usually you get nothing at all or plenty of bios beeps). Obviously replacing the one bad component would be preferable to spending $150 on parts for a several year old machine(nice rambus server board - P4t533(server/raid version, not "C" version). Plenty fast for her needs in any case. It's been rock-solid and would run for months at a time without a reboot.

It's odd since the LED status light on the MB isn't giving me an error or anything... And I've never had a machine die because of bad caps while it was running, either - always on trying to reboot.

Culprits so far?
- CMOS/CMOS battery dead? ie - crashed and can't reboot.
- MB dead?(previous model ate its memory controller, replaced with NOS board a year ago - this model has a fan on the Northbridge.)
- Power supply? Seems fine - power switch and reset buttons work fine - fans spin up to proper voltages/rpms. Nothing beyond that.(HD even eventually goes into power saving mode/spins down after a while of no activity) Everything works but no *beep* and startup?
- Bad CPU? It seems odd that it wouldn't at least give me a error code if a CPU wasn't installed/was bad...
- Everything else is verified working, and there are no funny smells or signs of electrical carnage, either.

Well, thanks for listening to my blathering.

I'd like to fix this by the weekend to I don't have to hear her freak out forever...

erilun · Post by **erilun** » Tue Jun 10, 2008 10:15 am

Odd, corrupt memory usually gives blue screen but I think you should try ro run memtest86+ anyways to ensure it's not the RAM.

Plekto · Post by **Plekto** » Tue Jun 10, 2008 10:23 am

Can't do that - no bios, no anything. The memory is Rambus ECC and never had a problem. I'll try removing one stick at a time, though(have the required parity/placeholder card).

It would be nice to have it be something so simple as the memory(though Rambus 1066/232 pin memory is about $100 per 256MB(ug).

Q: Does anyone make a new 478/775/etc board with AGP and IDE? I know abot the AsRock 4core dual, but that's kind of overkill - though I could drop a Celeron D 365 or similar on it for next to nothing)

erilun · Post by **erilun** » Tue Jun 10, 2008 12:13 pm

Plekto wrote:Can't do that - no bios, no anything. The memory is Rambus ECC and never had a problem. I'll try removing one stick at a time, though(have the required parity/placeholder card).

It would be nice to have it be something so simple as the memory(though Rambus 1066/232 pin memory is about $100 per 256MB(ug).

Q: Does anyone make a new 478/775/etc board with AGP and IDE? I know abot the AsRock 4core dual, but that's kind of overkill - though I could drop a Celeron D 365 or similar on it for next to nothing)

I never understood that it was completely dead. It's probably the motherboard as it does not beep when it POST.

About your question, Asrock got some socket 775 pci-express/AGP hybrids which also can handle Conroe dual cores. They goes for around 500 SEK (aprox 80$) here in Sweden.

JoeWPgh · Post by **JoeWPgh** » Tue Jun 10, 2008 3:10 pm

I recently ran into this problem when my computer tried to come out of hibernate. It wouldn't boot for anything. I removed 2 of the 4 1 gig memory sticks, and it reported the checksum error. It then said that my saved session would be lost if I continued. Big deal I said as I continued. It booted right up. I put the other 2 sticks back in and everything was fine, except for hibernate. I ended up changing the memory and all's fine now.

Plekto · Post by **Plekto** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 10:45 am

Well, I've got it down to the MB or the power supply. The MB looks perfect condition. The power supply is sort of iffy looking/on its way out, so that's the first thing to replace. Any new PC build would require a new one anyways, so it's good preventative maintenance.

Pulling the memory made no difference and it was clearly a short or dead component issue(cap or whatnot most likely) as the machine was working working *black screen - brick-in-the-corner a second later* No noise, no nothing, either. No funny smells. Work... no work sort of scenario. Like someone pushed the "dead" button upstairs and that was that....

Oddly enough the memory itself is still worth $60-70 per stick and the CPU maybe another $25, so that offsets some of the cost I guess, though I hate EBAY and the like. (ie - $200 to fix the computer. Old bits are still worth ~150...

kittle · Post by **kittle** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 2:22 pm

2 things here...

a) what size of RDRAM chips do you have? ... I may be interested.

b) have you tried taking EVERYTHING out of the motherboard and see what happens?
If the board is still good, you should get a series of beeps when you try and boot with nothing in. If its still quiet, you either have a square frisbee or a bad PSU.

VanWaGuy · Post by **VanWaGuy** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 6:33 pm

Do you have access to another PSU to test with? Since this is your ex's machine, can you pull one from yours just long enough to test with?

I have worked on a few machines that had a PSU go out, and that in turn took out the motherboard (mos often Bestec in an Emachine though, sounds like you are working on higher end equipment, but both being bad is still a possibility too.)

Plekto · Post by **Plekto** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 9:04 pm

No second PSU right now. No biggie. Yeah, pulled everything, no sound. Going to get a 320W PSU and check it out. Then likely get a 4coredual board and a dual core Celeron if the board is dead.

RDRAM 1066/RIMM4200 32 bit. 2X256MB Made by Samsung, of course.
And a CRIMM (Continuity module)

Not the 16 bit/184 pin stuff you need for the Dell machines, but the 32 bit/232 pin dual channel stuff. 4.2MB/sec for each dimm(so on a dual channel board, it was pleasantly fast operating at 8.4MB/sec.(quad channel - only two boards made supported 2x dual@32bit operation, which is a shame as it smoked DDR1 memory at the time.)

I tend to buy server or overkill boards for my own systems. This time I was tempted to get an older xeon dual cpu board , but a dual core worked just as well and was nearly free from a friend.

Completely sold on multiple cores and always have been - just they were too pricey(ever since the Amiga which did real multitasking). The two processors in my system are a huge improvement - just shocking. IN fact, I downloaded a TV episode from Japan as I was reading groups here and there wasn't a second of lag the whole time.