Help, please, help.

[coldfirenj]

Here is what happened. I was putting together my new pc today and I had forgotten to plug back in the CPU fan. The CPU hit atleast 90C before I caught on. Now when I boot up all the text of the bios is corrupted and so is windows. Is there any hope?

 

[sykopath79]

I accidentally did the same thing last week with a customer's computer (heh 00ps..), the heatsink was hot enough to cook bacon on and the system shut itself down. However I let the heatsink cool down, plugged the fan back in, and everything was okay from then on as if nothing had happened. This was with an Athlon XP 2400+ (T-bred).

Let it cool off for 20 minutes or so, PLUG THE FAN IN, and power it up. Most modern CPUs shut themselves off as temps get high enough to possibly cause physical damage, so might be okay.

Which begs the question... what processor were/are you using?

 

[huesmann]

and how do you know it hit 90ºc?

 

[oldman420]

it is posible that 90 c will fry some pathways in a chip but if it posts then pretty much you are ok is the agp bus at 66 mhz it sounds more like a vga issue than a processor one to me. try another vga card and see if that helps.

 

[sykopath79]

Originally posted by: huesmann
and how do you know it hit 90ºc?

I am assuming you have never encountered just-below-boiling water accidentally making contact with your skin. Water boils at 100°C, and this heatsink felt like it easily could have been above 90°C. But of course, I didn't have a thermometer handy. Just the brief moment of "HOLY SH*T THAT'S HOT" as the back of my finger grazed the heatsink while I was removing the DIMMs a minute or so after the machine shut itself down.

Originally posted by: oldman420
it is posible that 90 c will fry some pathways in a chip but if it posts then pretty much you are ok is the agp bus at 66 mhz it sounds more like a vga issue than a processor one to me. try another vga card and see if that helps.

Agreed; if the CPU were physically damaged I do not imagine you would get the system to POST at all. You could test by swapping video cards, or by trying the processor in another system.

 

[coldfirenj]

I did just get a new VGA. The computer also load safe mode fine. Any more ideas?

 

[oldman420]

a different vga than the one that was in there at the time of the first post?

 

[coldfirenj]

Yea.

 

[sykopath79]

If it's okay in safe mode, I believe we can reasonably assume that the CPU itself is fine.

It still seems to me like something related to video would be causing the display corruption problems. The only difference between safe mode and regular mode that would cause the display to look fine in safe mode is the absence of video card specific drivers being loaded.

Perhaps try a PCI video card, or another AGP card of a wholly different chipset (for instance, if the ones you've tried have been NVIDIA cards, try an ATI card to rule out NVIDIA driver issues).

 

[oldman420]

what are your voltages set at?
and what are the details of the machine proc video ram etc?

 

[coldfirenj]

Well, now I just get 5 beeps when I try to start up.

 

[Polishwonder74]

If you're running Aa P4 I'm pretty sure you're totally safe, btw. Check the video at Tom's.

Check your mobo manual for beep codes, that would be a good start.

 

[coldfirenj]

Got it to post again. Back to texture corruption. Why would safe mode display ok and now normal mode? :frown:

 

[coldfirenj]

Would formatting the HDD work?

 

[huesmann]

it might, rabbit, it might