3 years and dead?

[ChristopherP]

Yo

Got a bit of a problem with my roundabout 3 year old self built rig...

I went out tonight to work, all was ok...

Came home and PC was off... strange...

Hit the power button... nothing.

Power supply still had power, the red light was lit.

Killed all power, then turned it on at the wall. Everything springs to life for about half a second then falls over again. Pressing the power button on the front does nothing.

What could have happened in the 4 hours that i was gone?

Spec is as follows for those who may have forgotten:

Abit IC7-G Mobo
Pentium 4 2.8GHz (oc) socket 478
768Mb DDR400 RAM
2x80gb SATA drives RAID 0 (one on "warning" status for months)
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb w/arctic cooling (oc)
Less than 1 year old Hiper Type R 580w ATX2 PSU

Think thats all that matters...

Any ideas? I dont know what to try first...

Hope my PSU hasn't died - it was one of the top of the range when i bought it and cost an arm and a leg (on sainsburys wages)!!

Thanks

Chris

P.s. thank god i have a laptop here too!!

 

[muckshifter]

Everything springs to life for about half a second then falls over again

You have a 'short' somewhere ... something died.


Start stripping bits out.

 

[ChristopherP]

something shorted while the PC was just sitting there one evening, after 3 years of it being fine?

How could this happen?

What would you suggest stripping out first?

 

[muckshifter]

something shorted while the PC was just sitting there one evening, after 3 years of it being fine?

How could this happen?

Electricity moves ... any moving component is susceptible to wear-n-tear ... they fail.

What would you suggest stripping out first?

The PC

Chris, without "swap-out" parts to hand you can not do much but strip out non essential components ... disassemble and re-assemble using bare min components.

Getting the MB to 'beep' would be nice.

You must have seen the threads around here on the subject.

 

[ChristopherP]

Ok ta.

Yeah just wondered if it jumped out as something obvious.

Will strip out when i have some time & space.

Hope its not the motherboard or processor, as if either of those go i have to buy practically a new system!!

Thanks Mucks

 

[ChristopherP]

Had a quick go at fixing.

Unplugged UV lights and CD drives (and a case fan)

Turned the PSU on, springs to life, posts, then gets to the RAID detection bit (at the furthest) and then shuts off completely.

grr!!

 

[ChristopherP]

Might also be worth noting that while i can get it to go past the POST screen, it wont actually go into BIOS. Any attempt to do that results in the power cutting out.

 

[muckshifter]

Might also be worth noting that while i can get it to go past the POST screen, it wont actually go into BIOS. Any attempt to do that results in the power cutting out.

Is this a USB keyboard? Got a PS2 keyboard & mouse for back-up?

Are you using RAID ? If not, unplug all HD cables inc power & ribbon.

Despite the fact you have a "good" PSU, don't leave it out of the equation ... everything dies, everything!

 

[ChristopherP]

Keyboard is PS2 (via convertor) and i am using RAID 0...

 

[muckshifter]

oops

ah, hmmm, now then, err ... got back-ups to your data?

Nothing beats a good old fashioned PS2 keyboard for diagnosing faults ... cheap enough.

I also noticed you had OCed this thing ... sigh!

 

[ChristopherP]

Have most important data on flash disk yeah.

This computer has been overclocked for 3 years (hence the beefy PSU, SP94 heatsink, lots of fans) !!

No problems until just today.

Might pull the all clear jumper later when home see if that does anything.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Ok, back to basics.

Disconnect all drives, all of them (note which sockets RAID drives go into).

Attempt to POST.

If it doesn't POST, take motherboard out of case, put on non conductive surface and attempt POST again.

If it still doesn't I'm afraid the only way you're going to isolate faulty component is by substitution which could, I suppose, present you with a bit of a problem.

And the overclock you had, in my opinion, was probably not a contributory factor.

I've had my AMD XP3200 overclocked from 2.2Ghz to 2.4Ghz for over two years now and have also mildly overclocked my 6800GT card. All temps are fine, system stable.

 

[muckshifter]

Might pull the all clear jumper later when home see if that does anything.

Yep, good thinking.

 

[Adywebb]

Chris, I had a similar problem not long ago.

Turned out to be the PSU - could still give out enough power to start the fans for a second, but not enough to get past post.

The fact you disabled your lights/CD/Fan and it then went a bit further to post may indicate a similar problem.

Have you got another PSU in another PC you could try?

 

[Me__2001]

didn't you have a warning about one of your HD's a while back ? might have finally died?

 

[WinkingPig]

Chris is at Uni, so unfortunately, he doesn't have any spares available to my knowledge.

 

[floppybootstomp]

didn't you have a warning about one of your HD's a while back ? might have finally died?

That's what I thought.

Hence my advice in above post.

Ho hum.

Do it or don't do it.

I still think it's worth a try.

 

[Alf]

i had a problem like this too... i think i just took out the cmos battery and let the system idle for 20mins and replaced it... not sure if it worked but worth a try

 

[skiuba]

have you checked to see if the capacitors have popped?
look at the top of the capacitors and check to see if they exploded, they should be flat on top.

take out the processor the reseat it. clean out the fins on the heat sink
try swapping out the power supply. even though it appears that the power supply is working its possible that its blown. try swapping the mouse and the keyboard one by one to isolate ,if anything, is bad.

i have seen all of the above cause all different post problems with my clients computers.

try some of these and it works

jim

 

[ChristopherP]

Capacitors on mobo seem OK - was one of the first things i checked.

Maybe capacitors in the PSU?

Should a PSU make a kind of high pitched noise when it has power to it? not something you would hear over the fans... but audiable close up?

Tried turning it on again with all the stuff unplugged and it died right away - there is no consistency in when it shuts off with what plugged in etc.

will unplug all PCI and external stuff and see what happens...

Dont want my PSU to go *BANG* though... not wanting to be singly responsible for burning down halls of residence!!

Had my computer PAT tested just a week ago aswell... all was perfect.