No Beeps, No POST, now what?

[emackn]

Was playing World of Warcraft the other night and went to plug in my headphones and a loud, annoying sound started and my system locked up. I could not alt-tab or ctrl-alt-del out of it so i hit the reset switch. Machine powered up but thats it, no beeps, nothing. This machine worked for 6 months with no problems. I doubt the headphones had anything to do with it, but wanted to include it just in case

The MB is a ASUS P4P800 SE with a p4 2.4A Intel cpu.

Here's what I've tried so far:
- let it sit for a day, powered on, no beeps no post.
- removed ram, nothing
- put in a different cpu, a p4 2.4, with and without ram, nothing
- took board out of case with cpu and ram, nothing
- removed everything from Board (no cpu, no ram, etc), no different

Any suggestions?? I know a RMA is probably in my future(#2 for this board), but I just want to see if any one else had some suggestions.

Thanks.

side note:
I also tried testing the p4 2.4a in my asus P4S8X board (which doesn't support 2.4A chips) and i got and loud, soft beeps (BEEP, beep, BEEP, beep, ...) i guess to let me know that the chip was incompatible but I dont know if that also meant that the chip is ok. ??

 

[emackn]

/bump

posted last night, ASUS TAKES FOREVER to respond to support emails.

 

[mechBgon]

How about the power supply, what brand & model is it? And what's the general "power signature" of your system, is it chock-full of drives and/or a top-end video card, or is it pretty mellow?

 

[emackn]

Power supply came with the case, about 6 months old. Its a 350W ATX 12V RaidMax, KY-450 ATX.
Pretty mellow setup...
dvd drive
1 HD
radeon 9700 pro
audigy 2 ZS, 5.1 speakers
floppy
4 case fans, 2 front, 2 side (probably overkill)

 

[mechBgon]

I suspect the power supply (surprise! ). Get a good-quality brand in the 400W area, Enermax/Fortron/Antec are some safe bets.

 

[emackn]

So the machine could appear to power up but not be delivering enough power to motherboard?

 

[Malladine]

when you hit the power button do the fans spin up and does a light appear on the motherboard? If not i agree with Mech on the power supply.

If those things do occur, your ps is prolly fine.

 

[Apathetic]

When you power it up, listen for the fan in the power supply. If you don't hear anything or feel any air coming out of the power supply, it's probably toast.

Edit: fixed dumb logic error in my post.

Dave

 

[emackn]

Yes.. fans spin up and I get the green power light on the board. The fan does spin on the PS, but I will try the newer one I got the other day for my other power supply that died.

 

[emackn]

Update... I got home last night and decided to try my new ANTEC SL400 power supply with the troublesome P4P800SE. Plugged everything in,
CPU only on board (hoping to get beep codes that ram is missing) and still no beep codes... but one thing, after about 10-15 seconds the power supply cuts itself off. What does that mean??

 

[mechBgon]

Is the heatsink definitely making flat contact with good clamping force? Overheat could occur quickly if it isn't.

 

[emackn]

No its not.. I'll make a more thorough attempt at it tonight.

 

[manno]

I would of guessed the mobo was toast before I said the PS. I've owned very few P4 systems, but I've never had a problem with any PS on one of them... though the mobos seem to kick it easily enough.

 

[z00s]

I received this exact same issue 2 days ago. I exited out of World of Warcraft, plugged my Sony Digital Camera into a USB port. The system locked up, tried to reboot. Was eventually forced to hard-boot. No beeps, no post, nothing.

After trying to boot with just the Mobo, Video Card and Ram plugged in I decided to Swap out the power supply with a brand new one. Didn't fix the problem. The CPU/Heatsink/etc. were all seated properly and locked in tightly. Swapped out the Ram and Video Card and got the same lack-of-response. Already got a new mobo on the way. I just hope it is the mobo and not the proc.

Athlon64 3.4+
1 Gig of PQI 2-3-3-6
Asus K8N-E Deluxe
BFG Tech GeForce 6800GT OC

 

[emackn]

I got frustrated with waiting for a reply to my asus tech support email so I called the tech support number. I actually got someone from the U.S. but the first rep was a idiot and was all about getting me off the phone, he kept forgetting information I told him not 10 seconds before. He first told me that I needed to upgrade my bios because he heard me mention 'Prescott' when talking about the CPU I was using, totally forgetting that the machine would not POST or make any attempt to access the floppy drive. I reminded him of this so he then directed me to http://helpdesk.asus.com/biosorder and told me that my bios was bad and I needed a new one. "Just go there and get a new bios", he said... adding "they will send you a new one". So I let him off the phone and visit the site and its asking me about board revisions and bios versions... he didn't give me any of that info. I had the board revision from my board but the bios version?? I just selected the lastest one and added it to my cart. Then I was like "WTF.. I have to pay for this!!". I was not happy.

I called back 5 minutes later got a new support rep and he helped me (with venting and with my board). I told him my problem, we went through two tests.. and he told me that I definately did not need a bios upgrade and that they would RMA the board for me.

So, the point is this. If you want to save youself some time, call the US tech line, and if the guy is an idiot or impatient with you, hang up and call back. Yeah you have to wait in the queue again but its better than not getting the service you deserve.