Dragon Mobo and no system bootup... replace?

[savior]

Ok, So I searched for anything on the boards on Dragons. Most were for the plus version, which this is not. And dealt with power supplies.

Some background....

I built this machine last summer for my bro to bring to college. It worked fine except randomly it would not boot up. Usualy my brother restarting it a couple times would make it work. Of course I didn't know about this problem, he harldy ever shut it off. Well last week he was talking to someone on IM, this was litteraly all that was open on his machine, 'cept for background processes. The machine restarted itself, and then upon bootup it did not come up again. No bios, no nothing. The fans would start up and the machine would aound like it was starting, but no beeps from the mobo and no bios screen.

Well I've been trying to get Soyo on the phone to no avail, I mean I can't just sit there on the phone with them while I'm at work all day. And I sent an email to them and all I got back was an autoresponse saying that I probably would not receive and subsequent emails.

I tried switching processors, reseated the RAM, switched out all the cards, and even tried booting with a more powerful power supply. Nothing has worked, it still doesn't post.

I'm wondering if anyone has any other ideas, or should I just contact Soyo for an RMA without contacting the tech people. Or hell, should I just buy a new mobo from somewhere and cut the losses. here's my bros specs.

Soyo Dragon mobo(the original, from last summer)
AMD 1 GHz thunderbird processor
256 MB Crucial DDR RAM
pioneer DVD-ROM drive
AMK EagleB-0003 case
gainward geforce3 64MB video card
soundblaster audigy value
generic CD-ROM and floppy provided by AMK


That's all the stuff in there, since the Dragon has a bunch of stuff built in.

If anyone has any ideas I'd love to hear them. I'm gonna try and contact the RMA dept on monday and if I can't get through just buy a new mobo from asus or something and deal with soyo later, try to get my money back and junk. Thanks a bunch

 

[DaiShan]

are you sure that the mobo might not be grounding out somewhere? ie do you have all of the spacers installed in the correct places? when you say it would randomly not boot up do you mean nothing happened when he pressed power or what?

 

[savior]

Thanks for the quick response!

Well, I'd imagine the mobo might be grounded, but right now that doesn't seem likely to me. The machine has worked pretty well since last summer, and now it stopped working. That's like 7 months of system up time, till last week. Also in my experience when the mobo is grounded the machine does not power up, it tries to and then immediately kicks off again.

And when I mentioned nothing would happen I meant that the fans start up and the CD-ROM drive lights go on, and the network light is on, etc. But there is no bios, it just sits there humming with no actual boot up. In calling tech support they have about 6 messages played while you're on hold that mention updating the bios, but that's impossible on a machine that doesn't start up at all. Thanks again everyone.

 

[savior]

Well everyone, I plan on ordering a new mobo tonight after Frisbee at the latest. If anyone
has any new ideas that might solve this weird problem I'd love to hear them. Who knows maybe
I'll get lucky waiting online this morning with the Soyo tech support. Thanks again.