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Computer fails to POST sometimes

P

Packin

Member
About a month ago, my 1.5 year old build began to have problems POSTing.

The hardware:

Gigabyte P35-DS3L
C2D E4400
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800 2GB (2x1GB) (rated for 2.2V, but running at 1.8/2.2 does not seem to make a difference)
ATI X1950 PRO
WD 250GB SATA HDD
Random firewire PCI card

When I turn it on, all fans turn on, the hard drive spins up, CD-ROM drive spins up, but the monitor remains dark and my USB KB/Mouse do not seem to have any power.

I managed to run Memtest86 with 1 stick of RAM and no errors were found, yet the system still failed to boot all of the time even with just that 1 good stick of RAM. I have been able to boot with both sticks of RAM as well, but it takes a lot more power cycling.

To me it sounds like my motherboard may need to be replaced, but I can't tell for sure. Does anyone have any ideas of what is wrong?

Thanks!
 
I would check all your hardware power and cable connections ide/sata/power/mother and your installed card for poor connection. reseat the cards and unplug/plug your connectors. the mouse and keyboard plugged directly into the computer or a hub?
 
Originally posted by: techmanc
I would check all your hardware power and cable connections ide/sata/power/mother and your installed card for poor connection. reseat the cards and unplug/plug your connectors. the mouse and keyboard plugged directly into the computer or a hub?
Click to expand...

I'll reseat everything when I get a chance. My keyboard and mouse are plugged directly into the computer. I mentioned that they don't turn on because it doesn't look like any power is going through any of the USB ports. I have a wireless USB device that should be lighting up as well, but it doesn't (I've disconnected it temporarily until I can fix this problem).

Originally posted by: Lanyap
Either motherboard or PSU. What model PSU so you have?
Click to expand...

I have a Corsair 520HX so I'm still leaning towards it being the motherboard.
 
I agree that motherboard/psu could be faulty but its easy enough to check the connections first as that maybe the problem.
 
After checking the connections you may want to swap out the PSU from another working PC.

I would also suspect the RAM even though you have run memtest already. Those Ballistix 2.2V sticks have a high failure rate.


 
As mentioned above it could be the motherboard as well. I had this happen to me for a while and then one day instead of booting sometimes and not booting other times, it simply wouldn't boot at all - lights came on, fan, but no video, and keyboard didn't respond. I reset BIOS via jumper with power drained (unplug power and hold in power button 30 seconds) and still nothing. I replaced the motherboard, and it's been working ever since no problem, so in my case it was definitely the motherboard.
 
I am firmly in the Motherboard/Power Supply side of the post here. But I am leaning a bit more toward Power....perhaps a marginal Rail. but a Motherboard issue is certainly within reason also. I would buy a new(quality) power supply, if it doesn't fix your problem then you have a spare power supply, which is never a bad idea.
 
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