Dead PC - bios battery?

[fleabus]

Yesterday I turned on my PC. It didn't boot...didn't do anything. Turned it off and on again. Booted up ok. I left it alone. An hour later, I went back to it. The hard drive light was frozen on and the screen was black like the video signal had gone away. I turned it off and on again, but this time nothing happened. No fans or drives wizzing. I had an old power supply, so I replace the one in my PC with it. Now all the fans wizz and the hard drives spin up. PC is still dead though. No beeps, no video signal. I took out everything but the ram and video card. Still no beeps or video signal. I even ran it without the video card and got nothing.

PC contains
P3 500 slot 1 on a slocket
Abit BE6-II
Geforce DDR
Sb live platinum
2 hard drives (40gb maxtor and 120gb WD)
2 cd roms (one plextor burner, one pioneer dvd)
3com ethernet card

My best guess is when the power supply went, it took the motherboard with it. I was wondering though if any of this could be cause by a dead bios battery. The board is only 2.5 years old, so I doubt that.

I left for memorial day weekend and my pc was off the whole time, but it was like this when i returned. I know the power flickered off and on while I was gone (alarm clocks were reset), but the pc is on a battery backup/surge protector.

Also, I had had problems with the power suppy fan in the past. It the fan was noisy, but still seemed to work ok.

TIA.

 

[Ash2Dust]

Sounds like the PSU took the MB out. Is your replacement PSU a known good, has enough wattage? It may have issues also.

Also, I've known people who have had a neighborhood power problem getting PGE (power company) to pay for their damaged tv's and computers.

Have you tried resetting the MB bios with a jumper (check ur manual for instructions)? This has helped with a failure to post bios once.

Go ahead and pull the video card too. In fact make sure you pull *all* cards, *all* hard drives (I had a HDD failure feign machine death), CD-roms, and floppy drives. All a MB needs to boot is a CPU and 1 stick of memory (or the minimum required sticks). The machine should make beeping noises if it can post, telling you that you're missing a video card. If it still doesnt make beeping signs of life, then 1 of the 4 is bad; PSU, MB, CPU or RAM. Swap each out 1 at a time if possible.

My last experience with a failed bios battery (486-100) is that you lose your bios settings (date, time, hdd info, etc) but it will still boot to bios screen.

 

[japetto]

My best guess is when the power supply went, it took the motherboard with it

I think that is probably the best guess. I would still remove pci/agp and ide/scsi components and try to get it to POST. Remember that you can only hear error beeps if you system speaker is good-to-go.So I would check that too!Good Luck