Unbelievable booting problem, must see!

[SonicWind]

Hi everyone, my system has one boot up problem but other than that it works perfectly. When the machine is in OFF state and i turn on the power, onsome occassions (i would say maybe 2 out of 3) it would boot up properly,on other occassions the hard drive would spin up but I would get no display on the screen and no hard disk activities, butif i press the reset button the system would always boot on the second attempt. So the problem is essentially not being able to get the system to boot properly 100% of the time.

Does anyone have any clueabout what the problem could be? any help or suggestion would be appreciated, thanks

you can view my system setup below

 

[Tango57]

what are your overclocking settings in the bios? sounds like you might have a problem with your psu.

 

[Wigwam]

its a psu problem.
i developed the same problem on an old machine for ages before the psu finally went belly up

 

[SonicWind]

oh no, i digged up some old threads regarding abit vp6, and i think the problem could be caused by the faulty capacitors, i found one capacitor around the cpu socket with a domed top, and it looks like i will have to replace all capacitors onboard:frown:

 

[SonicWind]

oh no, i digged up some old threads regarding abit vp6, and i think the problem could be caused by the faulty capacitors, i found one capacitor around the cpu socket with a domed top, and it looks like i will have to replace all capacitors onboard:frown:

 

[wassupG]

I had similar problems with an abit board and the bad / leaky caps.Check with the mfg. They were replacing them.It was last year so I don't know if the rma's are still being handed out. Worth a shot though! Good Luck....

 

[SonicWind]

what is mfg? rma?

 

[Tango57]

MFG = the manufacturing company who makes your motherboard.
RMA = return merchandise authorization. when you receive a possibly defective part you can sometimes request an RMA from the company you bought it from. they will then either refund your money or send you a replacement after you return the defective part to them.

 

[boomerang]

Abit RMA link.

 

[SonicWind]

Unfortunately I live in Melbourne, Australia, and I am not sure how to request for RMA here. When I emailed Abit regarding this matter last week they send me the contact details of an Austrian reseller!!!??? I replied to their email saying I was actually in AUSTRALIA! hopefully they will send me something good this time

if everything fails i will either have to find someone in Melbourne who is capable of performing capacitor replacement, or try www.motherboardrepair.com in the US

 

[Tango57]

oh ok. well whom did you purchase your motherboard from anyhow? a retailer there in Australia?

 

[boomerang]

DO NOT go the motherboardrepair.com route. He has had a board from my wife?s business for nearly two months now. He responds to emails every 2 or 3 weeks, if then. At this time, I have not heard from him since March 31st. I sent my most recent email to him on the 15th of this month with no response yet.

I called the phone number he gave me, and an elderly woman answered and said she didn't know where he was or how to reach him. I even contacted an individual that lives in the same town he does through email. He promised me he would go to his store to see what the situation was and report back to me. I have heard nothing.

This guy had a great reputation, but obviously something has changed. I have seen similar behavior in my own family and my guess would be that there is substance abuse of some kind involved. This is just a guess on my part.

At this point I have no hope of seeing this board again. I paid him in cash too, which I now know to be a big mistake.

There are three systems at the wife?s office. All built around the same motherboard. Fortunately I had a spare or we would be screwed.

Beware.

 

[Slikkster]

Unless there's a systemic problem with capacitors noted on the motherboardrepair.com site, I'd say it's throwing good money after bad. He says average repair is $50, which I guess is ok given what most bench costs are, but then factor in shipping and whatnot and you've got a price almost as high as what a new board would cost you.

Of course, it depends on the board and depends on how attached you are to your current board and what problems might ensue with attempting to run Windows on a new platform (loading new drivers, etc.).

But my choice would be to go a new route. I fully understand, however, why one might go the repair route instead. Your choice.

 

[dWhisper]

I hate to tell you this, but you're probably stuck going two different ways here... getting something new, or going through the repair route. ABIT typically only had a 1 year warranty on their retail boards, and if they're like any of the other manufacturers that were struck with this issue (just about all of them), they only replaced it in warranty.

The capacitor issue stems back to a single manufacturer, Jabil I believe, and they made boards for just about everyone. They put a capacitor which was only rated at half the expected power on their boards (I work for one of the big-5 computer companies, we still deal with this issue, but most of these boards are about 3 years old), so the cap basically boiled out, causing the bulges, breaks, and leaks.

Personally, if you're set on keeping the system, I'd probably recommend trying to pick up a P3 board on eBay. Otherwise, you're going to look at a new MBD/CPU combo.