Re: Dead PC - Won't POST

"Dr.Hal0nf1r£$" <femail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:5_OdnRxh_MCL6oXVnZ2dnUVZ8tSdnZ2d@xxxxxxxxx
Dr.Hal0nf1r£$ wrote:
Nigel Wade wrote:
Dr.Hal0nf1r$ wrote:


Addendum: I switch on; all fans spin (3), HD light is constantly on,
PC speaker beeps once as normal, (Which suddenly leads me to think
it might not be the BIOS now - ?)DVD-RAM spins up and self-checks as
usual, but no visible POST, and just a flashing white hyphen top
left of screen. HD light still constantly on all the time - And so
it stays in that state. Holding the power button in eventually
switches it off as usual. It seems the mobo is functioning virtually
normally... This gets more baffling as time goes by: I'm going to
sleep on it though, (Not on the computer itself; you know what I
mean :-) ) before it's time to get up again.

That sounds like it's hanging trying to identify a device on the
IDE/SATA ports.

Disconnect all such devices and try to POST. If that works add each
back, one at a time, to try to identify the culprit. Most likely it's
dead electronics in a failed HD.

Also, remove all DVDs from your drives. I've sometimes found that a
DVD drive won't respond to POST/identify if it has a disk in it that
the drive can't correctly spin up and identify (I don't know what the
internal DVD drive firmware is doing, but it fails to load the disk
and doesn't respond to identify).

I disconnected first the IDE DVD-RAM; which stopped the HD light
coming on constantly at power-up, but no POST still. I disconnected
the floppy drive A; no change. I disconnected the SATA HDD; no
change. Next I'm going to try removing the graphics card and try
using the onboard graphics adapter in case it could be a
graphics-card-associated problem -?

No it isn't: I get exactly the same from the onboard graphics. I've disconnected everything except the monitor (HDD connected or not.)and the situation is the same: It appears the fault is with the motherboard; maybe the PSU - but unlikely. I'll do further tests later.

AFAIK this mobo is still under warranty - so it might be a case of RMA at the end of the day.

I wonder if it could be the BIOS battery? Some boards won't boot without
a good battery in place.

--
Graham W. www.gcw.org.uk Homebuilt Computer cooling. DIY projects
Wimborne. www.wessex-astro.org.uk Society website, meetings,
Dorset UK. location maps and future programs.

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