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After 20 years or so - the most bizzare problem I have ever experienced

J

Jack.Bauer

Junior Member
We've all had our share of hardware failures or drivers that prevent booting, but I have never had this happen before.

Something has gone wrong with my computer - seems to be hardware related.

I have an A8N32SLI Deluxe, with an Areca AR1220 RAID card installed, as an EVGA PCIe video card. I could dig up more details but they probably are not relevant.

I can no longer boot. The computer gets through POST, I can go into BIOS to configure whatever I want... My RAID card lets me go into the RAID setup configuration... But as soon as that is done and the computer is about to hand over the machine to bootstrap the OS, I get a blank screen with a blinking underline cursor in the very top left of the screen.

I remove the RAID card and/or program my BIOS to boot from CD... same thing happens - so it's not an issue of a RAID card problem or a boot sector problem.

The second that the PC finishes POST and the RAID card firmware test - the screen blanks as stated above, and all activity inside the case (specifically the blinking lights on my memory) stop dead.

At this point I am not entirely sure what the HW problem is. I can get into BIOS, mess with anything, see the settings on my screen... But the second all the POST work is done, the machine is dead.

While I'm open to replacing the hardware - planning on it for a while now, I've been postponing it. And quite frankly if I knew what the problem was, it would at least give me options. (For instance replace the video card as a stop-gap measure if thats what the problem is)

Does anyone have any ideas?
 
While Chloe is able to hack 1024 bit AES encrypted files in a matter of seconds...

She has not yet mastered the challenges of PC hardware.
 
Well... my PC started working again, not quite sure why. Not a heat issue.

Time to replace the equipment it seems.

🙂
 
tcsenter said:
Nuff said...one of the buggiest boards/series produced by ASUS.
Click to expand...

Hmm - had no idea.

It's served me relatively well. A power surge did some damage to it a while back, but for the most part, kept on chugging.

(One of the things that went for instance, is legacy PS/2 inputs)

Oh by the way, the problem is back. I was able to boot a couple times, but that is it. Wish I knew if it was MB, video card, or something else.

Likely it is the MB.

I have removed all USB devices, same thing happens. I think next I'll try removing all USB devices AND disabling all USB in BIOS. (Unfortunately that would make the PC unusable since the PS/2 ports died from the power surge...)

Don't ask me how the rest of the PC survived but only a few ports died.

I'm planning at this point to replace it with a P6X58D and an i7-930. I only replace my PC every 4-5 years, but when I do, I go for power & flexibility. (Only thinking of getting a 5850 (Sapphire Toxic maybe?) based video card though - don't need overkill of a 5870.)

I still would rather keep my current PC limping for a while but that's looking less and less likely.
 
Well - it's not the video card. (Found another PCIe card around to test)

So either the MB or the CPU.

That just about does it...
 
I'd suggest to just full power down and disconnect from power for 30 seconds. If it keeps happening regularly, then you probably do need to replace the MB.
 
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