This one has me stumped

fury

Administrator
Staff member
Prelude: A CD was inserted in the Compaq DVD-ROM inside this system (see System 2 in my post in the Rig thread). Everything fell apart thereafter. Windows 2000 Pro SP2 ceased recognizing the drive, then locked up and when it was rebooted, it hung at "Verifying DMI Pool Data".

After playing around for a while, I got the system running with a different hard drive (WD Caviar 36400, 6.4 gig), but then after I installed the OS, I shut the system down to mount the hard drive (please spare me the sick plays on the words "mount" and "hard drive" in the same sentence :laugh: ) in the case, and when I turned it back on, I didn't even get POST.

I reset the CMOS I don't know how many times, and I've reseated all the detachable parts in it, and given it a thorough dust-removal, I've swapped every part that I can swap, I've tried to boot it with only a video card in, I've tried booting to a floppy with no other drives connected, I've tried to boot it with the hard drive only connected, I've tried to boot it with a Win98 CD in the DVD drive with no other drives connected, I've tried disconnecting all the drives and turning it on to see if it would at least give me a post code for no drives being connected. Nothing even gets a beep out of the system. I turn it on and I neither see nor hear anything.

It doesn't make sense that it would fail this quickly seeing as it was working perfectly the day before it died. And I do mean perfectly as in we never received any blue screen or lock up from it after it was set at 945 mhz (there was one blue screen incident when it was clocked at 1000 mhz, but that was it). It ran for months at a time before this happened. Literally. It has a record uptime of 40 days on Linux. The system was ROCK SOLID, there is no logical explanation for something as trivial as inserting a CD causing a cascade failure like this.

I've tried just about everything I can think of. Anyone have any other suggestions?
 
S

s4

Guest
Perhaps inserting the disc had nothing to do with it. It could be that the system went down at that moment but was going to fail anyway.

I would check for power. Does the system display any signs of having power? It could be a power supply or perhaps the cpu fried. The motherboard could also have worn out. There are any number of things that could cause the computer not to display any signs of working. It sounds to me like you have a defective part or multiple parts that may have went bad.

If you have another computer that you can try the cpu and memory in, but you run the risk of messing that machine up as well.

I know that you like to overclock. I would look into whether the cpu is fried first. It sounds to me like it's either the power supply, cpu or motherboard. If it were the ram or video, I would think that it would beep the error codes. Are you sure the speaker inside the case is connected? You would at least hear some noises if the system could communicate error codes I would think.

Also, you might check the bios settings if you can get that far to make sure you are not overclocking or using too high of a voltage setting. However, it sounds like you are not even able to get the bios settings to display, so this suggestion is probably not helpful.
 

fury

Administrator
Staff member
I swapped in a spare power supply and got the same result. The system powers on, but that is it. No beeps, no POST. The speaker is connected. This leaves pretty much just the CPU and the motherboard to be the culprit. Next time my main system crashes (it is on a 5 day 13 hour uptime right now, so I'm not willingly shutting it down yet :D) I will put the CPU and memory from dad's system into mine. I should be sure what has gone bad after that, right?
 
S

s4

Guest
One remote possibility is that the cd contained a virus that destroyed the bios. There are some viruses that can be that destructive. This sounds hardware related to me though.
 
S

s4

Guest
The bath idea sounds like the best one. Be sure to use plenty of soap.
 

fury

Administrator
Staff member
Will do... err, wait

whicho ne should I use? Caress? Dove? Or Zest?

I heard the hard, non-feminine soaps are probably best to use since they don't have the useless moisturizing crap in them
 

fury

Administrator
Staff member
Well, it looks like the board is dead, because the RAM works perfectly, and so does the CPU.

Now I guess is time to start looking for a new board to put in it.

Any ideas? Stable would be preferred, don't absolutely need it to be overclockable but that would be nice
 

fury

Administrator
Staff member
Should I get another KT7a for it since I already have some SDR I could put in it? Or try to get a DDR board and finally enter the new generation?
 
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