Computer just up and quit on me last night.

[Swanny]

Hello all,

Well, I got home about 1 last night from a party, walked into my room, and noticed that the HD light on my Linux rig was on solid. I switched my KVM over to that rig, but nothing happened. I hit the reset button and still nothing happened. I was tired, so I just shut it off and went to bed. Before that, I checked my SETI Queue logs and the machine couldn't have been crashed for more than 3 hours.

This morning I tried to turn it on. Nothing but some lights flashing (HD and CD-ROM) and the fans spinning. I cracked open the case and looked for loose connectors etc. Then I reset the CMOS. Still nothing. The board has a debugging thing on it, so I looked at that. It was giving me a C1 error, which my manual says means the memory is bad. I've tested with known working memory in all configurations with no luck. Sometimes the debugger gives me an FF error, whose causes could be: BIOS chip inserted incorrectly, incorrect BIOS update version, mainboard problem, or add-on card inserted incorrectly. I've tried everything I could think of for those.

The rig is the one posted here in my profile.





Thanks,
Swan

 

[islandtechengineers]

i had that same problem with a laptop / p4 hp.... the mother board was fried due to overheating. well start to play the game of elimanate the monkey.

first the memory since youve recieved an error message in relation to it, drop it into another rig, run a tester on it or take it to a shop to have them test it.

do you think you have any loose hardware? try pulling out all major components after you pull the bios batt (cpu, video, memory), then put it back and try to boot up again.

if you're sure that all of your hardware components are good and fully functional (memory, cpu and the rest) then your mobo is probaly dead.

in most motherbaord I'VE seen over the past couple of years, the biao chip is flashable and soidered. so it cant be a loose bios chip.

if your mobo isnt posting when you turn your pc on, the probable causes are a dead mother board or maybe your psu is juiced. what wattage psu do you have?

i had a 250 trying to push 8 devices (hardrives/players) 4 add in cards, a power hungry p4 and it couldnt take it, I experience strange things like pc auto shutting off, certain things wouldnt work at certain moments, partitions vanishing and suddenly reappearing. then your problem on my desktop, swapped the psu and im good.

experiment, play with it and let us know what happens.

 

[Megatomic]

FF code on the 8RDA+ is a bad sign. I had to get a new BIOS chip for my board when I got that.

 

[Swanny]

I tried switching out the graphics card. The other card behaved differently. It turned on the monitor a couple of times, but it never displayed anything. With that card the FF code came up all the time.

 

[nick1985]

PSU?

 

[BigBadBiologist]

Sounds to me like the CPU or mobo is dead. When you turn your computer on, does the CPU fan spin up?

 

[mechBgon]

My 8RDA+ quit on a routine reboot one day when it was maybe 4-6 months old. Not overclocked, not overstressed, beautiful power (TruePower430 on an APC BackUPS Pro), and all the other parts went on to lead normal, productive lives I'd say it's time for a shiny new Shuttle AN35N Ultra

 

[Swanny]

Originally posted by: BigBadBiologist
Sounds to me like the CPU or mobo is dead. When you turn your computer on, does the CPU fan spin up?

Yes, all the fans spin and the HD spins up.

 

[Corey0808]

Have you tried a new video card?

 

[Swanny]

Originally posted by: Corey0808
Have you tried a new video card?

Yes, please look at my first followup.

 

[Megatomic]

Get a new BIOS chip from Epox. I bought one directly from them. Or get ZZZZZZ to reprogram the chip for you. I think that's all you need (a new BIOS).

 

[Swanny]

BTW, I have tried taking the CMOS battery out and leaving out for a few hours. No effect.

 

[paladiin]

On Epox boards, FF means both all good, or royally screwed. Here's what MotherboardFAQ's says about the Epox codes:

C1 - The number one error that users have with this board. It means that the ram was not detected. To be honest there aren't many fixes for this. Try different combinations of slots and sticks if possible, but the odds are you are out of luck. This board can be extremely picky about ram. In this situation I would test the ram on another board if possible to ensure that it works, and if so, return the motherboard for a new one. I would say that about 10% of boards have this problem with about 25% of ram. Not an impressive number. This error can also appear as C3 or C5.
FF - This code can be life or death for your motherboard, literally. FF means a successful boot or a complete failure. This normally means that your bios chip is dead or not being accessed properly. Try tapping or holding insert while attempting to boot the system, resetting the cmos, or: If your floppy drive makes any noise when booting, but the system appears dead, try placing a floppy in the drive with a copy of the latest bios file on it. This might cause the system to use an emergency re-flash feature.



With the combination of C1 and FF codes you are getting, it sounds like your motherboard has suffered a serious problem, one you're not likely to fix. Surely not the news you wanted to hear, but I'm guessing the board is dead (or dying).

 

[gistech1978]

i got an FF on my 8rda. i tried everything short of a new bios chip.
same exact symptoms you describe, fans spin all that, but no POST
inspect the board, look for leaky caps.
i had two caps leaking by the mosfets.
which is why im assuming it didnt boot up.
this is not an isolated incident w/ this board either.

 

[johnnnny5]

same problem with my board.... for some reason, taking the bios jumper and moving it to "configure" mode... or whatever similar mode you have... and then just resetting the bios defaults.... then shutting down replacing the bios jumper position to "normal" and rebooting seems to fix it.... usually in my case it happens after I change the hardware configuration.

My board is an Intel 875PBZ... I also have had the problem from a bad video card.

 

[Swanny]

Hey, just wanted to let y'all know that I finally got around to inspecting the board closely. The problem is with the caps. They must be from that bad bunch. A couple have brown stuff on top (leakage) and many others are "bluged".

Anyway, thanks for everyone's help. I'm sorry I didn't see this the first time I looked at the board.



Swan