PC powers up, but won't boot (no video or POST beeps)


RockDawg

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I'll try to keep this short.  My computer had been running great since I built it ~8 months ago.  Last week we had a power outage in the middle of the night (PC should have been in S3 suspend) and the next day it was powered off.  I tried to turn it on, but nothing.  Nothing powered up at at all.  I ran down to Staples and buy a new power supply and it powers up, but won't boot.  Monitor says no signal and I don't get the usual POST beep or any error beeps. I pulled the video card and tried the onboard gpu.  I disconnected every drive, and pulled/rotated each stick of RAM... Nothing.  I tried the monitor with my laptop and it works so it's fine.  I removed the battery and cleared the CMOS on both boards with no luck.  I finally conclude I must have lost the motherboard so I order a new one.  I put the new one in tonight and it does the same thing!  So I'm down to either another bad MB (possible, but hard to believe), the RAM or the CPU.  In the past, I've gotten error beeps the couple times I encountered bad or missing RAM or CPU, but maybe that isn't always the case?  My problem is that I don't have another system or hardware to switch the RAM or CPU with to test either one.  Anyone have any ideas how I can troubleshoot this?  I need my desktop back and it's already been a week. 

 

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition

MB (old): ASUS M4A88TD-M/USB3

MB (new): Asus M4A87TD/USB3

RAM: Mushkin Enhanced Blackline 4GB

GPU: GIGABYTE GV-N460OC-1GI GeForce GTX 460

PS (new): Antec EarthWatts EA650 650W

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Try to power just the mother board with the processer no ram. also double check speaker plug in. did you try to remove the bios battery? if a bad battery is a short it wont let bios boot. but no battery boots with battery error good indicater.

 

is there a posability that there is a short from a mounting screw once i forgot to remove a not needed standoff.

 

some ideas.

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Do you have any way of testing the speaker?  I would start there.  If it works, then the logical conclusion is that both motherboards are bad.  If a motherboard won't beep when booted without RAM (and connected to a known-good PSU), then there's not much point in continuing testing past that.  I've run into two defective motherboards in a row before.  I had to RMA both of them.  Rare, but it can happen.

 

One other stupid-simple thing to check - make sure the PSU is properly connected to BOTH power ports (4 pin and 24 pin) on the motherboard.  I've had a few embarrassing moments attempting to troubleshoot non-working motherboards only to realize that I had forgotten to plug in the 4 pin power cord...has happened more than I would like to admit ;)

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In my haste to get my computer back up, I ordered another CPU last night.  I read some internet reports where a the CPU was the culprit.  Probably isn't the problem and I can't return it.  :'(  We'll see.  I'll see what I can do to test the speaker tonight.

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The saga continues (for those that care)... The new CPU arrived today and I installed it in the new mobo.  I get a single beep! :)  But no video.  >:(  I then tried the new CPU in the old mobo and and it's just like before.  No beep.  No video.  Nothing.  So i'm concluding that the old mobo is indeed dead.  I then go back to the new mobo (which of course I ordered one without onboard video  >:( ) and when I either remove the video card or unplug the power connections to it, I get one long beep with three short beeps.  A quick internet search shows that's a graphic card error.  Re-install the card and re-connect the power to it and again a single beep with no video.  Video card seems dead too now!  So far the tally is a dead power supply, a dead mobo, a dead CPU and a dead GPU.  I'm assuming by the single beep when my GPU is installed that my RAM some how managed to survive the event that shall be forever known as 'The Outage'. 

 

All this money spent to repair a system that could have been spared by a $20 surge protector.  Yet another in a long list of expensive real-world educations I've received in my life.

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it is starting to sound more and more like you had a power surge/spike or brownout and fried a few components.

 

As we are going into rainy season and then air conditioner/rolling blackout (in cali) season, I think I'm going to microcenter for a UPS today.

 

I can feel your pain. we had an electrition at work accidently put the incomming power line to the internal 120v line on accident and blew up like 40 computers and printers at once. we spent weeks trying to recover data and usable parts. in the end, almost everything was toast.

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it is starting to sound more and more like you had a power surge/spike or brownout and fried a few components.

 

As we are going into rainy season and then air conditioner/rolling blackout (in cali) season, I think I'm going to microcenter for a UPS today.

 

I can feel your pain. we had an electrition at work accidently put the incomming power line to the internal 120v line on accident and blew up like 40 computers and printers at once. we spent weeks trying to recover data and usable parts. in the end, almost everything was toast.

 

That's crazy what happened at your work.  That's one heck of an "oops!"

 

 

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A new graphics card finally got my system up and running.  Although I've since also found out that my DVD-ROm and my card reader are also dead.  That leaves the Blu-Ray drive and RAM as the only components connected to the mobo that survived.  Anyways, thanks for everyone's input.

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That sucks that so much was toasted. Your home owners insurance might cover it. It might not be worth it though after deductables.

 

It sounds like this was your gamining rig, I take it the unRAID survived. I hope you had back ups on that.

 

Glad you got it sorted out though. it sounded like a real headache.

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Yah it does suck.  I put it together thinking I might game, but I never manage to stick with it and, as usual I played a game for a couple weeks and never did again.  I mainly use it for photo editing.  I forgot, my SSD survived also (thank goodness) so I suppose it could've been worse. 

 

Fortunately, I wasn't as stupid with my two unRaid servers.  They are both connected to a UPS and neither one skipped a beat throughout the outage.

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