Re: Dead PC - Won't POST

Harry Syme wrote:
"Dr.Hal0nf1r£$" <femail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
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Graham@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
"Dr.Hal0nf1r£$" <femail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
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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.

It might be possible; but the board's less than a year old, so I'm
going to RMA it and hopefully get a new one: Whether it's the
battery, CMOS fault, BIOS burnt out, whatever; it's unacceptable for
a board still under warranty - So rather than invalidate the
warranty by doing anything more to it I'll send it back and get a
new one hopefully.

you have tried a different psu havent you?

Yes; and tested the old one too: No joy; all ok.: it's a mobo fault for
sure.


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