computer won't boot, please help me

[forbin]

thanks vanilla, will try that.

on a side note, what is the difference between reseting cmos and erasing cmos, my mobo has instructions to do both

 

[forbin]

i just noticed that it will be EXPENSIVE to replace my cpu, if thats the problem. please explain this to me:

how is it that when i bought my cpu, 3000+ winchester, last march/april it cost me 153.00$. now it will cost me 175.00 to get a venice 3000+. people are ebaying/selling 3000+ winnies for $150.00!!!!. in 9-10 months, cpu prices havent gone down at all??

how much better is the venice core than winnie? if i do need to get a new chip, what would you all suggest?

 

[konakona]

depends on which socket you have and what you use your computer for. if its 754, the best deal in town is still the semprons I believe, since they oc well up to 2.5-2.6 range. if its 939, opteron 144/146 probably still is a better deal than athlons. dont quote me on that tho, I heard there were some recent price changes.
no idea what "erasing" the cmos would do... like deleteing the bios maybe (hope not)? sounds crazy! i would go with resetting.

 

[Lord Evermore]

I've never heard of "erasing" CMOS. CMOS is just where settings are stored for defining BIOS configurations. I just looked at the manual. Removing the battery to "erase" the CMOS is generally used just to ensure that the CMOS does in fact get cleared, since the CMOS settings depend on battery backup. Shorting the jumpers to clear it is supposed to reset it, but in some cases it might not (or perhaps the settings aren't entirely defaulted on some board designs). In general, shorting the jumpers is all you have to do.

As for why it shuts down with the CPU installed, it could be the CPU is fried or other things. Without the CPU, none of the other devices are being initialized, the mainboard probably isn't even sending power to anything except the fans. With the CPU installed, power will flow to everything else and then whatever is causing the problem shuts it down.

Take out all expansion cards, disconnect all cables and all the power cables to other components. Even take out the memory, but leave the CPU installed. If you don't even get a memory error beep, then either the board is dead or the CPU. You just might have damaged the CPU socket, even though the CPU itself was okay (not terribly likely but possible). If you get memory error beeps, then install the memory sticks one at a time and test after each one (you should get a bootup beep even without anything else plugged in), and then move on through the components the same way. This is the only way you can figure out where the problem is.

 

[konakona]

Just wanted to add that I had some massive trouble installing my new heatsink. At one point, I even thought either the mobo or the cpu, or both were dead. Later I found out it was some shorted soldering points of the DIMM slots on the back of the mobo that I kinda overlooked, so dont assume anything and be extra meticulous while analyzing the problem.