Need Help Bad. Very Worried.

[Pez D Spencer]

Last night I went to bed and my PC was working fine. See my sig for specs. This morning I got up and the PC started but I get no video, no post, and no hard drive activity except a single blink of the HDD case light.

Heres what is happening:

I turn the computer on and everything seems as normal. All fans are spinning and CCFL lights are working. The LED's on my XMS RAM is lighting up too. However, as I said before there is only a single blink of the HDD case light and thats it.

This is what I have noticed though, when first powering up the case fans and heatsink fan are spinning below full speed. At this time though the XMS RAM LED's are showing activity. This is when the HDD blinks one time and then quits blinking. AFter a few seconds, the RAM LED's die down to only the top single LED and show no more activity. After the RAM LED's die down the fans kick in to their full normal speed but then thats it. Im getting nothing after that, the system is on, fans spinning ETC, but no video, no post, no beep codes or anything.

I took the battery out, moved the CLRTC jumper, put the jumper back and then replaced the battery but it didn't help. Sill the same. I unplugged the HDD and then tried to boot it up but still the same thing minus the single HDD blink of course. Next, I took the RAM completely out and got some beep codes but nothing more. I also tried a single stick of RAM in slot 1 and then slot 3 but that didn't help either. Just out of curiosity I booted with the battery completely out but that didnt do anything different either.

What could it be? Any ideas? I am really depressed and upset if this system is no good because I have only had it for a week. I thought about trying a different PSU because people have said that these PSU's sometimes have problems but I'm not thinking its the PSU. Maybe I'm wrong though.

Im guessing its the CPU or the motherboard itself. I hope to god its not either because I already returned one motherboard and I dont want to have to go through returning anything again. I don't have another socket 939 CPU or another motherboard to test things on either.

I read somewhere that leaving the battery out for 30 minutes may help. Even though I have never heard of leaving it out this long, Im going to try.

Please give me some advice. I'm dying over here. Thanks.

 

[SkyBum]

I'd suspect your power supply. I revently had a faulty Antec Neo HE which was causing similar problems. Do you have another PSU you could try?

 

[Pez D Spencer]

Tried a different PSU and it didnt help. Im bummed out beyond belief.

 

[bruceb]

It sounds like your cpu cooling fan is the culprit ... if this was a system you built yourself, did you put the proper compound
on the cpu before installing the fan ? ? (most techs like Arctic Ice heat sink compound)

Did you make sure the cpu heatsink / fan is properly clipped into place ?

Does it have the proper size footprint and cfm volume for your cpu ?

If you have a spare fan try swapping it .. PC's will shut down almost instantly if they
think they are too hot or if the BIOS sees a bad fan speed indication (most bios checks for a Stalled fan, but some actually look at rpm)

 

[Pez D Spencer]

Ive been building systems for a long time, and yes I put AS5 on the CPU. If you see in my sig then you will see that I have a Zalman CNPS9500 heatsink which is a very good heatsink.

It seems like the system would at least POST but I'm getting nothing. No video, no beeps, zilch. I even tried swapping video cards but it didn't help.

If it was a screwed up BIOS then 1-The Crash Free BIOS would have kicked in, and 2-if the Crash Free BIOS didn't kick in then manually resetting the BIOS by removing the battery and moving the CLRTC jumper over and then back again should have fixed it. However, none of this has helped.

Like I said before, if I remove the memory I get a beep code. I was getting two beeps with the memory removed but now when the memory is removed I get only one long and constatnt beep.

If the CPU was toast then would the computer still POST? If the CPU was toasted then it shoudl beep to indicate that but it isnt. Maybe I fried the damn CPU who knows. I don't see how though because I wasn't overclocking to the extreme. Or could it be the memory? Im at a loss. I don't have another CPU or any compatible RAM to try. I have no ideas. Im ready to just take a hammer to the damn thing and be done with it. This sucks BIG TIME.

 

[bleuless]

if you swapped out a PS, i would go after loose connections next, then swapping/removing part at a time to boot with less and less parts to isolate cause. also look into the MB troubleshooting guide to see if this is a known/possible symptom.

 

[Pez D Spencer]

Nothing seems to be loose. I checked everything. Besides, why would it have worked last night and then all of a sudden not this morning? I don't think something could have magically came loose in the middle of the night.

It seems like I should be getting SOMETHING. It won't even POST. I don't see why everything is powering up without problems but Im getting no video, no POST, no sparks, no flames, no smoke, no nothing.

 

[bruceb]

Don't know what you should try next, except to boot with just one stick of ram
and see what happens .. maybe the cpu did die .. earlier you said the fans were
running slow .. that's why I leaned towards a bad fan initially

 

[Pez D Spencer]

Ive, tried with one stick of RAM. I alternated between each module and tried every combonation of slot(s) for them but it didn't help anything.

 

[Pez D Spencer]

Im really starting to think the CPU is fried.

 

[saltedeggman]

I'd disassemble everything and put it back together, it has helped me sometimes

 

[Pez D Spencer]

Are these symptoms that I'm having typical of a bad CPU?

 

[bleuless]

something that won't even post = a component lose or bad, the only way to find out what is start swapping things instead of speculating.

good luck, lets hope its something loose. i just noticed you have the same s/n as one my cousin likes to use, are you from NJ ?

 

[alimoalem]

you keep mentioning a battery in your original post. do you mean the power supply or something else?

 

[CKXP]

Originally posted by: Pez D Spencer
Are these symptoms that I'm having typical of a bad CPU?

yes, it's sound like your CPU is the culprit (no post, everything runs as normal, fans lights, etc.) i went through a similiar sitiuation with a XP-M 2600 that died on me.

 

[Pez D Spencer]

Originally posted by: alimoalem
you keep mentioning a battery in your original post. do you mean the power supply or something else?

No the CMOS battery.

Apparently the problem was my TV tuner card. As soon as I pulled the TV card out, everything booted as normal. I put the TV card into another one of my computers and the other computer exhibited the exact same actions as this PC. I guess Ill RMA the TV card.

The problem now is that unless I reset my BIOS settings to normal, I go into an endless reboot loop where the PC automatically reboots at the Windows XP logo screen. When I put my OC'd settings back into the BIOS I put them back exactly as they were before so I don't understand why its doing this. On the upside though, at least nothing was fried.

Hopefully I can get my OC'd settings to work again cause I didn't sink all this cash into this new system to run at stock.

Im running SFC now and if that won't work then I'm going to try a repair install.

 

[Pez D Spencer]

Originally posted by: bleuless
. i just noticed you have the same s/n as one my cousin likes to use, are you from NJ ?

Nah, I'm from Virginia. I actually didn't come up with this name. When I was a kid, me and my friends used to have this porn flick called "The Devil In Mrs. Jones Part Two" that we used to pass around. Although I never saw the original from the 70's with John Holmes, I suppose this was supposed to be the sequel. Anyway, I don't know if he was a producer, one of the "actors", or what but I remember the name "Pez D. Spencer" in the opening credits. I always thought it was a pretty clever name so I use it myself.

I'm not saying he got it from me but even if he did I really don't care. It is possible that he saw me using it somewhere on the net though because I've been using it since about 2001 on Yahoo and tons of forums. In other words, I've put a 5hitload of stuff out there on the net with this screen name attached to it. I mean, even if he did get it from me then what could I say? I ripped it off from somebody else anyway.

 

[Cawchy87]

I had almost this exact problem with a bad psu.

 

[Pez D Spencer]

Originally posted by: Cawchy87
I had almost this exact problem with a bad psu.

Its gotta be that TV card because the other computer acted the exact same way when it had the TV card installed in it.

 

[bruceb]

Well, at least now you now what did it ... now the question is "did the card just die for no reason" or
did your power supply cause it to fail ? ... you mentioned swapping the power pack .. how old was
the tv card ?? if recent, then probably just infant mortality & you got a lemon ... it happens

 

[Pez D Spencer]

The TV card was about a month old. Its been more than 30 days since I bought it so I'm going to contact Leadtek to see if they will replace it.