[Help] Dead motherboard or CPU

[rexian96]

I got into a trouble last night while updating the BIOS for Asus HD 4850 card. I ran this file but it never showed up even though I could see it running with 50% CPU in Task Manager. I gave it about 10 minutes and then tried to kill it but that didn't work.

I then shutdown the computer with the power button as normal shutdown didn't work either and when I turned it on after few minutes, it didn't start. I thought the 4850's bios got corrupted, so I removed it and tried to boot with the on-board VGA (after clearing the bios as onboard one was disabled), but still nothing except for the fans and hard drives spinning. The motherboard has 2 LEDs and none of them are glowing. There was no overclocking and the CPU temp was about 35C (since 1 core was at 100%) before restart, so is it safe to assume the motherboard is dead? But that still baffles me as I wasn't trying anything on the board or CPU.

I cleared the bios and tried to start the motherboard again this morning with just the memory and CPU, the LEDs are still not glowing. Here are the specs -

Biostar TA690G AM2 (bought in May 2007)
AMD X2 4200+ (bought last year)
2x2GB Corsair 800MHz
2x500GB Seagate in RAID 0
Asus HD4850

My other question is, if I get a 780G board, will I be able to view the contents of the hard drives? In other words are 780G RAID and 690G RAID compatible? I don't want to buy another 690G board as these are hard to find as well as quite old. I have a back up of important files but wouldn't want to lose anything if possible. Thanks for any reply.

 

[jaggerwild]

Hey Rex!

I would suggest doing a google of bad bios flash video card, as them GPU's are easy to recover if you did not use a certain file(forget witch one). You will need an AGP card, also how long did you clear the bios and how? Remove the battery and installed the jumper? Again the longer you let it sit the better(even over night).
I'd suggest do all the reading on it you can, this is where I'd suggest searching for the info
Text

Also what power supply unit do you have? Have another?............... Swap out anything that you have, and no you can not swap a raid out.There is a posting by fugger over at Xtreme Systems that maybe able to help you.It is under the Intel heading.
Good luck post back:beer:

 

[rexian96]

Thanks jagger, sorry it took a while to update. The motherboard was dead and I replaced it with Asus M3A78-EM, but thinking of getting it replaced again with a Biostar TA790GX XE since it's 790GX and has better RAID / SMART capability.

I lost the data as the 780G board couldn't show anything on the hard drives but that's OK as critical data was backed up (RAID 0 basics). 4850 works fine with the new board so motherboard was the issue but still a bit baffled how a board dies after a proper shutdown.

BTW, if RAID can't be recovered with a motherboard switch then what good is RAID 1 or 5 if the motherboard fails (not the drives)?

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: rexian96
if RAID can't be recovered with a motherboard switch then what good is RAID 1 or 5 if the motherboard fails (not the drives)?

That's a question to ask AMD. Intel and nVIDIA RAID at least have often been backwards compatible. Here's an example of someone preserving a RAID 5 array from ICH7R to ICH10R:

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...id=29&threadid=2278963