Sudden Death - Fixed!

[mindslash]

This one has me stumped! My computer just died -- no hardware modifications were made in the last year. It will not boot -- the monitor has on two occasions shown anything at all of the initial BIOS (where it says what video card, BIOS date etc) right before the screen once again blanks out. On most occassions the screen remains blank -- the CD-ROM LED remains lit. However, totally removing the CDROM did nothing to fix the problem. Power on is strange as well -- In fact as soon as you turn on the switch at the back of the PC, it powers up. The "softbutton" switch at the front has no impact on power -- only the one on the PS can turn the PC on or off. All four fans (intake, exhaust, PS and HSF) whirr away when the power is applied so I don't think its heat -- 'sides, I opened the case up and so now theres only the chasis skeleton and the PS left as the case.

I have a MSI KT7 Pro-2A board with a non-overclocked Duron 600, 256MB of RAM (Crucial, PC133,3). The Heatsink and Fan are some generic CoolerMaster thing that came with the CPU/Motherboard. Asus 7100 (?) Videocard (nVidia GF2MX), a NIC, 20GB WD HDD, Teac floppy, generic Sony CD-Rom (50X) and that's it. The system PS cannot be overstressed as it only powers the M/B, the HDD, floppy and CD-ROM. I thought perhaps the graphics card had died somehow but replacing it with a known working card did nothing.

The only thing I CANNOT vouch for is the software -- the OS is 98, but god knows what, if anything, my roommates have downloaded and installed on it.

All suggestions (except for "Just s***can it") are welcome. Thanks in advance.

 

[jblondi]

Well, first off, I feel for you man. Nothing like losing a soldier in the field.

Couple of things to try:
Make sure everything is properly seated. Maybe for some odd reason something came lose?
Try new ram, new processor, new hd, everything you have available....possibly the powersupply.
Try parts on another machine to see that they are not the cause. ie. try the ram, video, hd on another computer.
Back to basics. Pull everything out except for the chip and fan. Power it up, and listen for beep codes for missing devices. Start from there. Then put in the ram. Then the video card. The beeps should go away completely. Im thinking if no beeps, with basic installed components it has to be either processor, mobo, or power supply.

Good Luck. PM me if you have more questions.

 

[santar72]

I would try what jblondi said and if you don't get any beep code, then it might be your CMOS battery.

 

[Allanv]

Check here and see the problems with that board mine died after 11 months some have died before this time but it seems to be a common fault.


www.msihardware.com

look in the forums also when the search is fixed on here search for the tons of posts regarding that board

 

[KGB]

That MSI board has the DLED feature (doesn't use beep codes).
What do the LEDs tell you?

P.S. I also had one of those boards go bad after about 7 months of use. Might be RMA time.

 

[mindslash]

Thanks guys for all the responses. I did however try the following:

1) Remove CPU and HSF. Scrape the thermal pad off. Add Arctic Silver compound and reseat CPU and HSF. - No dice!

2) Reseat all fans, power/interface connectors, and cards. - No dice!

3) Replace Video card - no picture right? - Still no dice!

4) Talked myself out of buying a new CPU, and cleared CMOS and voila! It lives!!

While this "sudden death" is still unacceptable, it may be fixable -- anybody else having this problem with an MSI board should definitely try this.