Computer stopped booting; Odd noise

[jjlawren]

Last night my computer stopped booting. No changes were made beforehand. When I turn on the power, the drives start to spin up, the CPU and PSU fans run, and the diagnostic LED's light. And now there's an odd crackling noise that I can't pinpoint. If the crackling noise doesn't stop, the computer will boot past the POST screen, but will give a black screen when the Windows loading screen should come up. Drive doesn't access after that. If the crackling noise stops (it seems completely random), the power to the drives seems to die (at least to the DVD-ROM, which won't open if the noise has stopped) but the fans keep going and the LED's stay lit (usually with an error). Sometimes the crackling noise stops during boot, and the screen goes black. When the noise stops I also hear the "click" noise you hear when you restart the system. Restart switch has no effect after this.

Since then it hasn't even attempted to boot into Windows, and normally won't even get to the POST screen. Usually no video is sent at all to the monitor. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to the problems. My guess would be a power supply problem.

Other things to note: Memory check at boot comes out clean. CPU is correctly identified. CPU temp is normal. RAM was changed to different slots with no change. All cards were removed and reseated several times. Drives have been disconnected and unpowered in every possible combination. On a cold boot, the system will NEVER start to boot. The reset switch must be hit, but only works if the crackling noise is still heard.

I'm clueless--I've never heard of a problem like this before. Here's the system:

MSI K7T Pro2a
Duron 700
256MB PC133
Nvidia TNT 16MB
WD 8GB 5400 (Not sure if this is the drive in there)
DVD-ROM

If you need any more information, let me know. I'll try to test with another power supply, but won't be able to for a few days. Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[Allanv]

lloks like you have the click of death..... from your MSI MB

search this forum and look for subjects about msi motherboards or try here

www.msihardware.com look at the problems they have including mine..

i had my pro2a for 11 months one day pop RIP ... we all noticed about the boot problems its the first thing that happens if you were to disconnect the power from the MB for a while plug it back in sometimes it will boot sometimes not. when mine crashed (which became more frequent in heavy apps 3d / moving large files / encoding vcd) the reset button would not work i had to hard reset then one day poof gone dead ... it seems a known problem for msi but they have to date never acnknowllaged it.......

if you can RMA the board and forget about getting another one by a different make instead.