My PC died!

[Jack Carr]

My super-fast machine crapped out and neither I nor the local PC repair shop can figure out what is causing the problem.

From one boot-up to the next it will not come up. When I hit the power button, the lights and fans start up and the hard drive light and CD-ROM drive lights go on and stay on. The monitor never gets off of the 'No Signal Detected' message.

After attempting to fix it for the better part of a day and only succeeding in pissing myself off for the holidays, I dropped it off at the local PC repair shop. To my dismay, they also could not get it to work.

I have just purchased a new motherboard, power supply, hard drive, and cables. I bought the same exact board that I had initially and dropped that off at the PC repair shop and that also did not help so I am sending that Chaintech back and I have purchased an Abit board. This time I went with a Seagate drive and Vantec power supply. Have to see how that works out. Obviously with this new gear, I will have to reinstall the operating system and everything else but I have all of my Combat Mission mods backed up so no problems there.

The PC repair shop swapped out the video card, ram, and processor and tried them in other machines and said that they worked fine so I'm hoping that these components are ok. They also tried different cables to eliminate the possibility that it might be a bad cable somewhere.

The specs for my currently dead machine are:

AMD XP 2800+ Thoroughbred Core 2.25ghz

Chaintech 7NJL1 Apogee motherboard

Kingston Ram PC2700 333 1.5GB (3 512mb sticks)

Chaintech GeForce Ti4600 128mb video card

2 Western Digital Hard Drives 80GB's each 7200RPM with 8mb cache

Thermaltake XASER Power supply 480 watts

Sony 52X CD-ROM drive

Sony CDRW/DVD-R drive

Creative Labs Soundblaster 5.1 Gamer card

US Robotics Internal Modem

3Com NIC Card

Hope I haven't forgotten anything.

If anyone has any ideas/notions about what might be wrong, feel free to post. It's the strangest thing, it ran like a demon for about eight months and then...nothing.

Thanks all! Everyone have a great New Year, especially the folks at Battlefront!

[DEY]

Hi jack,

Sorry to hear about your (P)ersonal ©onfuser troubles.

I'm a little confused as to whats going on, did you have an previous configuration that was working, then you updated some stuff to different parts for some reason and now the PC won't POST.

Or did your PC get in this screwed up state, then you tried changing parts to different stuff and it still is in the above state.

You say that the CPU, VIDEOCARD and RAM are confirmed as functional.

What you have to do is go through a process of elimination.

First thing you should do is strip down the PC to only bear minimum. Disconnect the CD drives off the motherboard and floppy if ya have one. And only use one stick of ram. also just have the videocard on the motherboard.

So all you should start out with connected or activated on the motherboard is the Videocard and the Harddrive as the only drive and only one stick of RAM.

Also parts may work in other setups put not on your current setup. I'm thinking of that Ram, it may not be compatible with your motherboard.

It sounds to me as an issue with CPU or RAM or both things not being detected by the motherboard. You should look at an compatibility issue with those two things and your motherboard. Also you should look the power supply over real good it could be faulty or even maybe an compatibility issue with it and your motherboard.

Good luck.

[Jack Carr]

Dey,

Thanks for the advice. No hardware or software upgrade was made. From one boot-up to the next it just did not come up. As I had stated, the machine ran beautifully for eight months and that was after I upgraded to the Chaintech motherboard.

Thanks again. I will make sure that I try the things you listed.

[Redwolf]

Parts confirmed functional in one machine don't have to play nice in the next. There are complex interactions between the components.

Normally this behavior would be mainboard but if you swapped it already it's probably the CPU.

[DEY]

Hi Jack,

It does appear after reading your post again,

that since the CPU and RAM have been confirmed as being okay, that the chainteach motherboard has been damaged or that the power supply has been damaged or both.

I worked as a PC tech for several years and your problem is an classic case of the CPU and RAM not being detected by the motherboard, when this happens the motherboard won't even POST and that is why your getting that no signal error on your monitor.

I would stay away from that so called repair shop if I was you, they sound useless and I would be very suspect about what was going on with that newer chaintech motherboard.

[Jack Carr]

I received the Abit motherboard today and will probably get the cables, power supply and hard drive tomorrow. I should have more information on this saga on Monday or Tuesday afternoon. Thanks for your input.

[ December 31, 2004, 08:58 AM: Message edited by: Jack Carr ]

[TufenHuden]

if you upgraded from a old to new mobo-you might have to do a clean boot-or other mobo drivers are interfering-or the ram-does this mobo take your chip AMD-XP or is it a AMD-64 mobo.

[Redwolf]

No, listen up.

If you want to move a Windows 2000 or better installation from one mainboard to another with a different IDE controller, then set the IDE controller to "generic" or somesuch while it is still connected to the old PC. Then the installation will boot up on the new one and you can install a real IDE driver from there.

Of course, neither Linux nor FreeBSD give any trouble, they neither refuse booting when moving nor require you to use super-slow disk drivers for a while...

[DEY]

When you start up a computer (BOOT), there is a two step process to having say windows or linux or even plain old DOS showing up on your monitor.

The first step is done by and solely controlled by the motherboard's Basic Input Output System (BIOS), what happens is there is routine run called a (POST) Power On Self Test, this happens every time you start your computer this is all at the hardware level, there is no software drivers involved.

PC BIOS

The second step if the motherboard POST was processed without any errors, it will then pass over control to any bootable device connected to the motherboard and start up an operating system.

In Jacks case the motherboard can't even run the POST routine, of which if there is a problem with the motherboard in some form, especially if it can't detect the CPU or the RAM, that is the result you get.

SO in his case something happened to the motherboard or the CPU or the RAM or all three of those things. Also the power supply can be bad and is not giving proper voltages anymore.

[Redwolf]

I was talking about moving Windows from one intact machine to another.

[Jack Carr]

Originally posted by DEY:

When you start up a computer (BOOT), there is a two step process to having say windows or linux or even plain old DOS showing up on your monitor.

The first step is done by and solely controlled by the motherboard's Basic Input Output System (BIOS), what happens is there is routine run called a (POST) Power On Self Test, this happens every time you start your computer this is all at the hardware level, there is no software drivers involved.

PC BIOS

The second step if the motherboard POST was processed without any errors, it will then pass over control to any bootable device connected to the motherboard and start up an operating system.

In Jacks case the motherboard can't even run the POST routine, of which if there is a problem with the motherboard in some form, especially if it can't detect the CPU or the RAM, that is the result you get.

SO in his case something happened to the motherboard or the CPU or the RAM or all three of those things. Also the power supply can be bad and is not giving proper voltages anymore.

Yes, correct. This is exactly what is happening.

[teotwawki1]

Well, to echo what others have said, you need to isolate the suspected bad components one by one...replacing them with known good components, if you have extra one sitting around, to test.

What I usually do is take the mobo out of the case, and hook it directly up to the power supply. (Make sure it's sitting on something non static, like the foam mat that comes in the mobo box, and/or the anti static wrapper). You can then hook up just the video card to it, and see what happens. Obviously, you need to be careful when you do this not to spill/drop anything on the mobo when it's powered. If it doesn't POST, then try another CPU if you have one, then another stick of RAM. If you can get it to POST, then add peripherals like disk drives/cd roms, etc one at a time.

Are you hearing any beeps at all when the machine boots up? If so, and you have your mobo manual, you *might* be able to tell what's bad just by looking in the manual. That's the theory, but it's never worked for me.

I've had every weird computer error known to man, and then some lol. Basically, it's a PIA, and the troubleshooting can be frustrating. I have all kinds of bits and pieces laying around but even then you can't always duplicate the same problem.

I had an MSI mb that would not work with a GeForce 4 in a certain case, no matter what PS I used. Moved the card and PS into another case, at it worked fine. I still have no idea what that was all about, but I use it as an example of how difficult it can be to get a handle on this kind of problem.

It *sounds* like the CPU is bad/not seated properly, but it really could be a couple of things, including a bad mobo as well. But from what you describe, those would seem the 2 most likely candidates. Oh yeah, make sure the CPU cooler is working...athlons's can get too hot to even POST if the cooler isn't working.

[Jack Carr]

Thanks again for everybody's valuable suggestions. I decided to turn this Christmas disaster into an opportunity to upgrade my machine.

I purchased brand new components for the following:

CPU

RAM

Power supply

Motherboard

Cables

The only components that I am keeping from the original rig are:

case

video card

modem card

sound card

all cooling fans - including CPU cooling fan

I got the AMD XP 3200+ processor and bought 1GB of Kingston HyperX RAM. The new motherboard is an Abit.

If all of this new equipment doesn't wake up the dead box I'll laugh. I'll laugh first and then I'll cry.

I'll post the results.

Thanks everyone.

[Jack Carr]

Originally posted by teotwawki1:

It *sounds* like the CPU is bad/not seated properly, but it really could be a couple of things, including a bad mobo as well. But from what you describe, those would seem the 2 most likely candidates. Oh yeah, make sure the CPU cooler is working...athlons's can get too hot to even POST if the cooler isn't working.

This is what the repair shop suspected as they found that the clip on the cooling fan was not tight. How that happened I will never know because as I stated previously, it ran fast for 8 months. However, they did replace the clip on the fan and not only that, they replaced the entire fan in several tests and still could not get the machine to post.

[Jack Carr]

LOL! Just got a call from the repair shop. The brand new Seagate Barracuda I purchased is not formatting. They said that the drive is bad. I told them to reformat the old drive and see if that works. He said that he tried loading Windows XP to a small partition on the old master drive and it worked fine so he is going to reformat it and use it as the master. I don't mind because its a fast drive with plenty of capacity but my luck just keeps getting worse with this situation. AAHHHHHHHHH!

[ January 04, 2005, 01:20 PM: Message edited by: Jack Carr ]

[Jack Carr]

For those folks that may still be interested in this dilemma, the problem turned out to be the power supply was bad and was frying the motherboard. I have my machine back and it works. I purchased more hardware than I needed to in order to get it running again but in the end I upgraded my machine from a 333FSB motherboard, processor and RAM to 400FSB motherboard, processor and RAM. I went from a 2800+ to a 3200+ processor and RAM to match.

Hopefully I will pick up some speed.

[Jack Carr]

My new setup sports an Abit AN7 motherboard (Nforce2 Ultra chipset) with an AMD XP 3200+ and 1GB of Kingston PC3200 HyperX RAM. So everything in the case is operating at 400FSB.

My dead components were a Chaintech 7NJL1 (NForce2 chipset) with an AMD XP 2800+ 2.25ghz Thoroughbred core 333FSB and Kingston PC2700 RAM 333FSB. All of the components ran at 333FSB.

The old setup seemed quicker. Am I crazy? I think this more memory on the chip thing is for the birds.

[junk2drive]

"1GB of Kingston PC3200 HyperX RAM."

Just curious, is that 2 x 512? If so, is it dual channel?

[Jack Carr]

Originally posted by junk2drive:

"1GB of Kingston PC3200 HyperX RAM."

Just curious, is that 2 x 512? If so, is it dual channel?

Yes, that's correct. My old setup had three sticks of 512 PC2700. The old motherboard was dual channel capable as well. I tried it, pulling the middle memory module and enabling the dual channel DDR functionality but it didn't seem any faster to me. I think that's overblown as well.

Perhaps Combat Mission is an application that you won't see that much difference on because it's not as demanding as most FPS games.

Anyway, I really thought I would see a small difference but as I stated previously, it seems a bit slower.

I think RedWolf posted a test scenario that everyone ran to see how long their system took to figure out the turn. I'll have to pull that one back up and try it. I had some pretty good times on the old setup. I'll have to see what this new one can do with it.

[junk2drive]

I still have that CMAK cpu test battle if you need a copy.

Search for cpu test should pull up that thread. Let's benchmark CPUs thread

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by junk2drive:

"1GB of Kingston PC3200 HyperX RAM."

Just curious, is that 2 x 512? If so, is it dual channel?

You cannot tell whether it is 1x 1GB or 2x 512 MB without further information.

Athlon XPs never run dual-channel memory so it only matters for expandability.

[ January 14, 2005, 04:24 PM: Message edited by: Redwolf ]

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by Jack Carr:

My new setup sports an Abit AN7 motherboard (Nforce2 Ultra chipset) with an AMD XP 3200+ and 1GB of Kingston PC3200 HyperX RAM. So everything in the case is operating at 400FSB.

My dead components were a Chaintech 7NJL1 (NForce2 chipset) with an AMD XP 2800+ 2.25ghz Thoroughbred core 333FSB and Kingston PC2700 RAM 333FSB. All of the components ran at 333FSB.

The old setup seemed quicker. Am I crazy? I think this more memory on the chip thing is for the birds.

512 MB RAM is enough for pretty much everything people do on home PCs, with some exceptions. Large images for example. Doom3 can also make use of more than 512 MB.

You will not be able to tell the difference between DDR333 and DDR400 RAM in interactive use.

Your 2800+ could have been a Thorougbred core or a Barton core. If it was a Thorougbred core it was running at 2250 MHz. Your 3200+ runs at 2200 MHz.

The 3200+ has the higher <fantasy>+ rating because it has a DDR400 memory interface but the CPU is the same clockspeed as your old one. which is what counts for most applications as long as there is "enough" cache and memory bandwidth (where "enough" is very complicated to gather).

You will, however, hit memory usage that makes you feel the 1 GB (or rather, not feel) if you continue to upgrade software, get higher-res digital cameras or whatever else you do with your PC.

[Jack Carr]

Originally posted by Redwolf:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by junk2drive:

"1GB of Kingston PC3200 HyperX RAM."

Just curious, is that 2 x 512? If so, is it dual channel?

You cannot tell whether it is 1x 1GB or 2x 512 MB without further information.

Athlon XPs never run dual-channel memory so it only matters for expandability. </font>

[Redwolf]

Athlon XPs (the 32 bit Althons) never use dual-channel memory.

It is the Athlon 64s which can or can not use dual-channel memory. With socket 754 they don't, with sockets 939 and 940 they can - if your chipset and mainboard support are up to it and you are lucky.

Even with the Athlon 64s RAM is still an issue, to my knowledge not a single socket 939 board specifies to run 4 RAM modules in 2x dual-channel mode at 800MHz, they scale down the chips from 400MHz to 333 if you plug in too many. Often they actually do run 4 modules at full speed, but they don't say it will.

No such issues with Pentium-4s and at least the Intel chipsets.

How important exactly cache size and memory bandwidth are highly depends on the application but generally more than 512 KB cache is pretty useless with current applications and dual-channel memory is pretty much pointless - except for Half-Life apparently.

But generally, in your situation you just have a little more memory bandwidth. What the cache does is another matter, I honestly don't know how many applications constantly blow 256 KB and are happy with 512 KB. But since you don't feel a speedup your new machine for your applcations is obviously not limited by cache and RAM bandwidth, so you fall back to core speed - which is the same for your new and your old computer.

[Jack Carr]

Thanks RedWolf!