help me, my computer wont boot (hardware problem)

[SolTek]

my computer wont boot past the bios, sometimes not even that far. It just freezes like something gets too hot. sometimes it will boot to the point the os is loading, sometimes it wont even get to the boot screen/ mem initialization. It says checksum error sometimes, and tells me to reboot. this happened before about a month ago, but i screwed around with it for a day and it seemed fine, then today i played a game of cs and an hour later this happened. My processor was oc'ed from 900 to 1000 (athlon with big heatsink). I thought it was my video card overheating so i reattatched teh heatsink which had come loose a while ago, but nothing is better. It is either my motherboard, processor, ram or hd. im guessing it's not my hd cause it fails even at the bios load screen. i've interchanged all my ram and it still gives me the error, so it's either my mb or processor, i think. anyway to fix this or help??? i have an athlon 900 and an msi k7t pro-2a. if anyone could just give me a suggestion i would appreciate it. thanx, sol

 

[SolTek]

i get a CMOS read error, followed by Loaded Defaults. and then the next screen is just the blinking curser. C'mon, anyone know how to differentiate between Mobo failure and chip??? im guessing CMOS would indicate the mobo, not sure though

 

[ddeder]

There are two surefire ways to determine if this is a problem with the CPU or motherboard. First, replace the CPU with one that you know works. If the problem persists, then your CPU was not the problem. Next replace the motherboard with one that you know works. If the problem persists, then you know your motherboard was not the problem. Seriously, those are the only two ways I know of to determine if you have a bad CPU or motherboard and I doubt you will hear differently from anyone else in this forum.

Now, more than likely, you are going to tell me that you do not have a spare CPU or motherboard just lying around... That is why there are computer repair shops.

Before taking your computer to a computer repair shop (where the technician will replace your CPU/mobo with another one for testing purposes), I suggest you try this:

Stop overclocking your processor until you figure this out.

For the heck of it, try to boot from a DOS disk and see if you don't make it past the bios and into DOS.

Clear the CMOS and reboot to see if this helped.

Pull all of the RAM from your computer except for 1 stick and see if that does anything for you. If not, replace that stick of RAM with one of the other sticks of RAM just in case you have a bad RAM stick and it is the one you chose to leave in your computer for the first try.

Try a different video card (I doubt this is the problem, but it sounds like you are scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas).

Good luck.

 

[SolTek]

thanx for the help, im running win2k, so there is no DOS. I have the diagnostic leds, and they say it's a problem with the processor every other time i boot it up. I'll wait an hour, go turn the comp on it'll get to the point it is loading the os then just stop there. so i'll turn it off and back on and it wont even put up the bio screen, it just gives me straight red lights on the diagnostic leds, meaning it's the processor. but if i let it sit a while it says it some sort of memmory error and such, it's giving me mixed signals. I guess i'll go off to Fry's the day after tommorow (since they are closed on turkey day) and pick up a new chip to test it (which is most likely my problem, i think). I have reset the CMOS to the default config, so it's running at 900mhz for the time being, if it was runing at all.

 

[ddeder]

I assume you are talking about diagnostic led's that are right on the mobo? Good luck with the new CPU.