Overheated and burned?

[blacktankofhopelessness]

Oh bollocks.

So, yesterday morning my woman turned on my comp and started surfing away when all of a sudden it went blank and rebooted by itself. It never reached the boot-up procedure though, just freezed after restart.

I have moderate experience of building my own rigs (four total) so I immediately suspected a heat-related issue, as I am running a 2500+ mobile oc'ed to 3200+ speeds. Sure enough, my heatsink (Zalman CNPS 7000) was clogged with dust which must've raised temps considerably. I wasn't running any temp monitor progs at the time (stupid as hell, I know) so I can't be too sure about my readings. But I ran Rome: Total War for 2 hours+ the day before without any issues...

Now to my question: How do I rule out the possibility of HD failure? I don't want to buy myself a new CPU and mobo just to find out that my HD was the cause for the boot failure.

I tried clearing the CMOS, cleaning the heatsink and removing all external devices (including HD and Graphics). When I turned the power on it started and I got a single short beep from my PC Speaker. Does that mean that my mobo and CPU are ok?

 

[FlyingPenguin]

Does the computer POST (get past the initialization, checks memory, reports the hard drives connected, etc)?

If the computer POSTS it's doubtful that the CPU has suffered anymanent damage. Even with a clogged heatsink, as long as the heatsink is securely attached to the CPU and the fan is running, it'll stay cool enough to avoid permanent damage. Also the motherboard is designed to shut down if the CPU overheats.

The restart could have been anything: power brown out, corruption of the registry, driver error, stray cosmic ray. The real question is whether there is some permanent damager, or was it just a glitch and the registry was left in a corrupt condition.

Where in the process does it freeze on bootup? Do you get as far as seeing the Windows logo? Do you get any kind of error?

Can you get to the boot menu by pressing F8 during the POST screen? If so, try selecting the "Use last known good configuration" option.

If that doesn't work, boot to the menu again and try going into safe mode. If you can get into safe mode use system restore to go back to a save point from a few days ago.

If you can't get that far, pull all cards except the video card, pull all memory except one stick, disconnect all drives except your boot drive and try again.

Hope this helps...

 

[blacktankofhopelessness]

Thanks for replying with such detail!

I would use the last good config, if I could. My problem is I don't even get to the POST screen. The power comes on, fans start spinning and the Mobo power indicator is lit, but my HD LED doesn't even light up and my monitor just powers on and immediately shuts off after which everything just freezes. So I tried starting without the vid card and all HD and optical devices which got me a short "beep" when powering on. I read somewhere that this short beep could point to some memory problem, but since I'm visiting my parents during easter and my computer is at home I can't try starting without my two PC2700 sticks of Samsung in. That is a good point though: Since I was overclocking a bit it could be that those two low-end sticks of RAM finally failed after running OC'ed for four months.

So I leaning towards a memory problem after reading up on some articles, but how can I make sure it's not my HD? If I don't get to POST after removing everything but vid card, boot HD and my one PC3200 stick of RAM - would that point to a CPU/Mobo problem? Even if my HD is fecked, I would still get to POST, right?

 

[FlyingPenguin]

It's almost certainly not a hard drive issue if it's not POSTing. POST has nothing to do with the hard drive - it's the initialization of the Mobo's BIOS. If you see nothing on the screen when you turn it on, you haven't even gotten to the HDD yet. My gut feeling is that the drive is fine and so is your data.

Well it's promising that you got a beep code error when you pulled the video card. That's an indication that BIOS is running. BIOS is giving you a beep error to let you know that it can't find the video card.

You don't get a beep with the video card installed, though? Usually if the card isn't being detected you'll get a 3 beep error.

Do you have a spare video card you can try? It's possible that card is dead and that the dead card is also shorting out the reset bus on the computer and keeping it from giving an error code when the card is plugged in.

I'd say RAM is the next possibility. Try running the system with one stick - alternate sticks.

If you can get the system to POST with one stick of RAM and the vid card, then you can connect the HDD and see if it boots to Windows.

You said you were overclocking. It's possible that something happended and the system just can't support the overclock now (maybe a RAM stick degraded or something). Try resetting the CMOS (check the mobo manual - there's usually a jumper). That should put the clock settings all back to default in BIOS and may allow it to POST.

Net possibility is that the PSU has gone bad. If you have a digital multimeter, put a meter on the 5 volt and 12 volt rails on one of the hard drive power plugs and see if the voltage is within 5%.

Next possibility is that the mobo is toast. Mobos do just spontaneously fail - it happens pretty often. Usually it's a capacitor or regulator that gives up the ghost.

Hope this helps..

 

[blacktankofhopelessness]

Like I said, I tried clearing the CMOS which didn't help, so I'll try it with one stick of RAM that should definately work since it's PC3200 that's been running below stock speed.

Thanks for helping me out, I'll let you know how it works/if it works out tommorrow!

 

[blacktankofhopelessness]

Well, I tried powering up with different sticks of RAM with no success. I do not, unfortunately, have another vid card I can try. I must've heard my speaker wrong before, because I can't get a beep error code when starting - even when trying without the vid card and HD connected. I guess that points to a fatal error with either my CPU or Mobo, right?

Anyhoo, if anyone can confirm what I've found does indeed look like a mobo/CPU failure I would greatly appreciate it. Expecting to order new components tommorrow if that is the case.

 

[FlyingPenguin]

Smells like a mobo failure to me. It's pretty hard to kill a CPU.

 

[blacktankofhopelessness]

I'll take your word on that and buy myself a 754 board and a A64 3000+ just to put my socket A days behind me ;-)

I should be able to get a few bucks for my 2500+ mobile if I can confirm that it's ok.

Thanks for your help Flyingpenguin!