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Ever have this happen??

R

Remnant2

Senior member

Frankly this problem has me scratching my head. I've been troubleshooting systems for ages, but I've never seen this before.

Here's the situation. The system is a AMD 1700XP running on an MSI KT3 Ultra. 350w atx power supply. 80gb maxtor HD.

I built it about 3 months ago for my folks, and it's been running fine this whole time. About a week ago they called me up and said it wouldn't boot, so I went over and checked it out.

The system just wouldn't boot. Turn it on, and the power and HDD lights turn on and stay on but nothering happens. The DLED diagnostic output from the motherboard has 4 reds, which indicates according to the manual "the boot hangs here if the processor is damaged or not installed properly".

Well, although I've never had it happen that a CPU died just like that, I went ahead and bought a new 1700xp from newegg. It arrived the other day, and I put it into the system. Nothing changed. (May I add, the old CPU looks perfectly fine with no obvious signs of heat-failure, chips, or anything else physically wrong).

So now I start really scratching my head. And I notice for the first time that I don't think the HDD is turning on on boot! (I went so far as to disconnect the case fans to cut down the ambiend noise, and the HDD is definitely NOT running. Which is strange since in my experience the HDDs power up as soon as they get power on their feed plugs. I tried several different power plugs with no luck.

Thinking maybe the PS is busted, I whip out my multitester and check, but there is +12 and +5 in the proper places, and the case fans and lights are on. Feeling the heatsink, it is stone cold; if the CPU was getting power wouldn't the heatsink warm up?

So I have no idea what's wrong 🙂 It seems like maybe the PS isn't supplying juice, but then why are the case fans up, and the multitester reporting proper voltages?

Other than buying a new case or PS to see if it fixes it, does anyone have any ideas?
 
Motherboard is bad,replace it & this will fix it.

everything can spin Up & everything can look good BUT if one of the mobo parts are dead then you're fusked,no heat to cpu should have gave you a hint that the mobo is dead.

try the cpu in an other board,if it's good then you have confirmation that the board is wacked.
 
Originally posted by: Budman
Motherboard is bad,replace it & this will fix it.

everything can spin Up & everything can look good BUT if one of the mobo parts are dead then you're fusked,no heat to cpu should have gave you a hint that the mobo is dead.

try the cpu in an other board,if it's good then you have confirmation that the board is wacked.
Click to expand...

yep...I would have tested the proc(and possibly all the other components..) in another board first(or used a spare Duron in the mobo that I have around for just that purpose..) but it doesn't matter now ..mobo time.. test the hd in another rig to check it as well tho
 
Have you tried clearing the CMOS? or have you tried pulling the CMOS battery for a couple hours? BIOS corruption can cause this.
 
Hmm. Well, I don't have any spare boards lying around to test the components in; so basically I'm out $60+ no matter what part I choose to try testing first. 🙁

I'll try clearing the CMOS, you never know..

The thing I don't understand is, if the Mobo died, why is the HD not spinning up? HDDs usually spin up regardless of the MB being alive or not; hell if you just give them a power feed and don't connect the ribbon cable, they usually work.
So it seems odd that the HDD dies at the exact same time as the MB.
 
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