Turning on....but NOTHING?

[TimboAA]

So I turned my PC off to add a new heatsink & fan. I had everything completely unhooked and I grounded myself as well. Since I had the case open I decided to take a can of pressurized air to the entire thing. I take it I was running low and it started spitting out fluids, I thought nothing of it...until now.

As I pulled off the old heatsink my flathead slipped and hit the motherboard, although i checked it very carefully and saw no visible signs of damage. The old heatsink also had an impression in the thermal compound where the cpu core was...it looked like there was little to no thermal compound on the cpu core. I scraped off cpu core lightly with the thermal compound spreader and then applied some new silver thermal compound. I affixed the heatsink & fan and hooked everything back up.

I then went to turn on my computer and I got no video signal, the secondary hdd was making a weird whining noise, and the HDD light was on constantly.

I unhooked each HDD seperately and tried rebooting...with the same results. I can hear the HDD spinning like it's going to boot, but it doesn't get that far. Upon further examination I noticed the fan on my GeForce 4 video card was barely spinning...I could count the revolutions. So i took it out in hopes that it might still boot up...or atleast boot further or make a different series of blinking lights or something. That didn't do anything though. I then unhooked all of the HDD and tried rebooting and the HDD light was STILL on... *confused* That to me made no sense. There were no hdd cables attached anywhere. I tried clearing the CMOS as well and it still provided the same results.

Right now... I have a few ideas as to what it could be...but each one isn't necessarily a cheap fix.

Ideas:

1. CPU is fried....Maybe I shorted something while I gently handled the CPU on the edges for inspection?
2. MB is gone...from it being struck accidentally by the screwdriver or shorting out from the liquid from the can of air.
3. Video card....doubtful...but who knows...


Does anyone have any other ideas? One idea I might have...although it doesn't make any sense is that the MB doesn't like the new fan....because it requires more power.

Hardware:

AMD 2100xp
Asus A7N8X Deluxe MB
GeForce4 Ti4200 128mb
768mb of DDR RAM
Seagate Baracuda 120gb SATA HD
Western Digital IDE 80gb HD
Samsung CDRW
Sony DVDRW


Optical drives spin up normally.
HDD Light is always ON
SATA drive spins up normally-ish
IDE HDD spins up and makes a loud whining noise all of a sudden.
No video
No beeps


Many thanks in advance....go figure this happens right before I have a major project due...thank goodness I have a laptop...although the computing time will take longer because it's slower.

 

[Uncle Bob]

If you had "everything unhooked" does that mean all the internal cables? power & ide cables? is it possible you plugged something back in the wrong way?

 

[Fern]

Well,

I'd unhook everything from the mobo except CPU (plus HS+F), ram and vid card. Of course leave the KB, mouse and monitor attched. Try to boot.

BTW, you needed to use 91% (or higher) alcohol and a clean cotton cloth to clean off ALL the old compound from the cpu and HS. Otherwise the AS wont perform it's best.

Nothing in your remarks (other than the fluid possible) indicates you did anything to fry your cpu.

You might try reseating your vid card and ram after unplugging the pc.

Any chance you dropped something behind the mobo and it's causing a short?

Good Luck with it.

Fern

 

[TimboAA]

I didn't unhook everything. I left the optical drives plugged in. I have also reseated the video card. That didn't seem to do anything. I'll try unhooking all the PCI cards and optical drives & floppy.

Thanks.

BTW, you needed to use 91% (or higher) alcohol and a clean cotton cloth to clean off ALL the old compound from the cpu and HS. Otherwise the AS wont perform it's best.

I know this, i just didn't have any available at the time.

 

[Big Lar]

Sounds like you got a bit of water on the board, perhaps in the socket, maybe in the agp traces. Been there, done that/ try blowing a fan,( a real fan, like a 12" house fan or something), onto the board/ cpu area overnight and see if that does it.

 

[goosee007]

Hi, I am having problems with my PC, after 2 days with my PC powered off, when I tried to power up, all the lights come on to all the devices ... I have 2 CD-Roms(both are burners), 3 HDDs(2 SATA, 1 IDE), 2 512k of Ram, Intel 2.4C 800 CPU, Video Card, Sound Card, Wireless card, TV tuner, and 420 Watts PS, the case has 8 Fans connected. I built this PC myself, but this seems an on going problem. It only happens when my PC is turned off for a day or two, and when I try to power up, its seems the system is hanging. All the power lights are on, the HDD lights are on but I don't hear them spin, and I don't get the POST, nor any signal to the monitor to show anything at all. But when I disconnected all the devices and left only the CPU, videocard and ram in, the lights come on but no signal showing on the monitor. When I connected at least the 2 SATA HDDs, I get the POST and I can boot to CMOS, and OS. I am not sure why this keeps happening, I tested all the cards, and CD-Roms, and they seem to work fine. I am wondering if its the power supply or the Mobo? I purchased this mobo from ASUS, the P4C800-E Delux, so I don't know if its one of the chips. It would be kinda sad to know if its the mobo because it was a costly purchase. I was thinking of try getting a Power supply tester. Any ideas would be helpful, I've already tested the PC with a different monitor, reseated the CPU, RAM, and reconnected the devices and everything will work fine until I shutdown and don't use this PC for a couple of days. Really wierd.

 

[TimboAA]

Ok...so I did some testing... It is not my video card since it works on another computer. My guess is that the problem lies within the motherboard when I hit it accidentally....Is there anyway to test just the video card?