Dead on Christmas day

[Chris A]

A one year old computer that has been running great until today.

You push in the power button and the lights come on and the fans start to spin and then death. Almost even before your finger leaves the power button it turns back off.

Any ideas... First guess?

 

[JustaGeek]

Power switch failure.

Seriously - this is my first guess.


Second guess - memory module failure.

Third guess - the PSU.

 

[Chris A]

Not sure how to verify the switch. A few times I have tried to power it up it lasted about 3 seconds though. Switch seems to function correctly though. Those are Normaly open switches Correct?

Memory, Took out both sticks replaced one. Same, Swapped out the other one. same thing. Put them both back in, Same thing.

On one of the 3 second starts it made like a growling noise but I could not pin point it. Might have just been a fan. But all fans fire straight up. Disconnected Hard drive and DVD drive. Nothing...

 

[JustaGeek]

I believe that they are normally open switches.

Reset the CMOS and try again - just remember to go into BIOS after you've done that, to redo all your settings.

And perhaps put your specs in the signature or one of the messages - it is easier to troubleshoot when we know the hardware and the OS.

 

[JustaGeek]

Sorry - gotta go!

Hopefully the others can help you from now on.

If the CMOS reset doesn't work, I would get a different PSU next.

Good luck!

 

[Chris A]

Cleared CMOS no luck there either..

Running XP sp1
AMD Athelon not sure of the speed.
ECS motherboard not sure of the model. Built it well over a year ago.
1 gig of ram Value ram.

Picked it up as a Fry's Combo deal.

 

[Laputa]

Could be a stuck power switch. If there is a reset switch, you can use that on the power on switch to test to see if that's a issue or not. Maybe try to reseat the RAM and the video card. Could also be a bad power supply as well.

 

[daveybrat]

Sounds like a bad motherboard to me. And being an ECS branded board sways me toward this decision a little more. The symptoms sound just like a dead board, powering on and then shutting off. First thing i'd usually try is hooking up a different/new power supply and if you get the same symptoms, it's a bad board.

 

[Netopia]

In previous AMD CPU mobos, if your CPU fan wasn't running (or it THOUGHT it wasn't running), the computer would shut down almost immediately. Not sure if current AMD CPU mobo situation is, but is it possible that the mobo believes that your CPU fan isn't running and just shuts down the computer for safety's sake? Do you have another CPU fan you could plug into the mobo head just to see?

Joe

 

[Qutlass]

Thought about making a new thread, but this is exactly what happened to me also on x-mas morning. I was reading over the responses and tried the to connect the reset switch to the power switch header on the MB and it came on...so i put back on the pwr swt and it came on again....scratching my head and looking over the connections i noticed the 12v plug (4pin tht goes next to the cpu, DS3) was not plugged in.. so i plug it in back and it does the same thing as before...goes on for 3secs then restarts. Can i assume this is a PSU prob? Maybe the op can check this also.

::edit:: after some more reading, it looks like it could be my motherboard on the fritz also. Gigabyte DS3 rev. 3.3. Not having another PSU to test on the motherboard makes getting to the final culprit difficult. PSU is a Corsair HX620W.

 

[Chris A]

Ok this morning I powered it up and it was funning for a few seconds. One beep at start up and Bios was loading saw the CPU, Memory, It said no Keyboard present? Then died.

Plugged in a new CPU fan but it had no change. It did seem to stay up a little longer in the morning though.

 

[Chris A]

Crap. Forgot to add but the case speaker was growling. Kind of like a static low pitch growl.

Now I get nothing out of it. Hit the switch and nothing.

 

[Chris A]

Ok I had left it pluged in while typeing that last entry. Just as I hit send I heard a Pheeep sound and saw smoke coming out the back of the power supply. I guess I get to buy a new one.

 

[Chris A]

Going to replace the power supply today as I am pretty sure that was the problem.

Just wanted to say thank you to all the people that helped out with this.

 

[Chris A]

Ok new power supply but nothing boots when I push the power button. All the fans were spinning but no bios beep or nothing on the screen.

 

[bwatson283]

if the psu blew smoke, then it might be likely that something else died.

 

[Chris A]

The old power supply was a problem. One of the large capacitors had been leaking white stuff out the top. Thre resistors are now black as is one small capacitor.

Now that I have a new power supply I cant get it to post. Reseated CPU, Video card, Disconnected all drives and left in only one stick of ram.

Hit the power switch and fans come on lights come on but no beeps or anything on the screen at all.

I think the motherboard is toast.. Not sure if the motherboard was bad and killed the power supply or if the power supply killed the motherboard.

Two question's though. Does it sound like I am correct in thinking the motherboard is dead? Thoughts on what killed it?

 

[daveybrat]

All symptoms you've described point towards a bad motherboard. At least you now have a good power supply, but the board needs to be replaced next. Try aiming for an Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, Abit, or similar branded board of better quality.