new cooler and no POST

[Koharski]

got a brand new rig a couple days ago, got a half decent OC and decided I wanted to push it further so I went down to the local computer shop and the owner sold me a used cooler from his old rig for 20 bucks. The thing seemed pretty decent but it was a B*TCH to get on. I managed to mount it and I was pretty careful not to damage anything but it took a decent amount of force.

so I plug in the computer and it boots fine, then I realise I forgot to plug in the keyboard and mouse so I quickly switch it off and plug the two in and then power it on again.

nothing

the fans spin on and I can hear the harddrive spin up a second later, the cd rom blinks and checks the disk in the drive but I have no video or anything. I took out the motherboard and i've got it sitting on it's box in front of me. I've tried booting with all components out and swapping things around but nothing gets it to post.

anyway i'm pretty livid right now because i'm 90% sure that I f*cked something up so i'm going to take 5 before I try and work on it again. is there anything I forgot to try?

 

[Krynj]

Try popping the BIOS battery out and letting it sit for a minute or 2.

 

[lxskllr]

Have you tested with different memory? Try a couple of different memory sticks individually.

 

[Koharski]

unfortunately this is the only new computer in the house, so no DDR2 ram and no pci-e video cards I can try.

I have completely disassembled and reassembled the pc 3 times now including one time in a test bench environment with the mobo just sitting on its' box. It is now back in it's case and I have not solved the problem.

I'm pretty sure I fried the graphics card, after the first successful post with the new cooler I went to plug in the keyboard/mouse and I decided also to plug in my second monitor while I was down there. I guess I also forgot to put the mounting screw in the video card because it slipped out of the top of the socket when I applied pressure to plug in the monitor. I quickly opened the case adn pushed it back in and put in the mounting screw. During this there was power to the board, like the computer wasn't turned on but it was plugged in.

should the computer boot without the graphics card? I tied to take the whole thing out and see if I could hear the windows startup sound to make sure everything is ok but it does not boot. The USB devices get power for a second and then turn off.

I tried taking out the battery and that didn't help

 

[krnmastersgt]

Hence the reason you shouldn't plug/unplug things with the power connected. Might also have been an electro-static discharge, from the description you didn't ground yourself before pushing your card back in.

One thing to try is take out the video card and try to boot the system, if it gives you beeps to tell you there's no video card then the motherboard won't be the culprit. Plug the card back in, and if there's still no video then power down and take out all the ram. Boot again and if there's beeps then we can pretty much rule out the motherboard as cause for trouble. Plug the ram back in 1 by 1 and see what happens, if 1 stick went bad and you have them all plugged in, your system won't boot.

Other than that, if nothing works still you'll have to find some way to test the vid card and ram in another system to see what's causing the problems.

 

[lxskllr]

I would think it should still boot, even without a gfx card. I wonder if the northbridge got fried when the card came out of the socket. Can you get an old PCI gfx card from that shop? I'm not sure it'll help in your case, but if you can get one for $10-$20, they're nice to have on hand. You'll at least be able to see if the PC starts to POST.

 

[zerocool84]

You should be getting some beeping from not having gfx in there but it won't POST. Have you tried reseating the cpu?

 

[Koharski]

I got a PC speaker from an old computer downstairs. No beeps, I tried taking out the memory (1x2gb stick is all I have at the moment) and the graphics card and no beeps for anything.

I guess it's fried then. Ill dig up a PCI graphics card and see if I can test it that way but I have low hopes.

this was probably the ONE time I didn't unplug the computer from the wall and wait for the LEDs to turn off. go figure.

 

[krnmastersgt]

When there's no beeps from the absence of ram or a video card (or both as it seems) then it's the motherboard giving you issues, looks like it might be time for a replacement.

 

[lxskllr]

Originally posted by: krnmastersgt
When there's no beeps from the absence of ram or a video card (or both as it seems) then it's the motherboard giving you issues, looks like it might be time for a replacement.

The PSU is still left. Ya think it could have shorted when the gfx card came out of the slot? Maybe the 12v is shot.

 

[krnmastersgt]

Originally posted by: lxskllr

Originally posted by: krnmastersgt
When there's no beeps from the absence of ram or a video card (or both as it seems) then it's the motherboard giving you issues, looks like it might be time for a replacement.

The PSU is still left. Ya think it could have shorted when the gfx card came out of the slot? Maybe the 12v is shot.

Wouldn't that short out on the board rather than the psu? It's a possibility and worth testing if there's equipment/time for it. I'm still heavily leaning towards the mobo though, in fact another possibility is that from shoving it the board is shorting on the case.

OP, try taking out the motherboard and essentials from the case and repeating the steps from before again, if there's beeps then there's a sign of hope yet.

 

[lxskllr]

I would expect the mb more than the psu also, but the psu would be easier/cheaper to check.