J
Joe Befumo
Although mainly a software guy, over the past twenty years or so I've
developed a modicum of skill diagnosing the more common hardware issues, but
this has me utterly perplexed.
First, the machines: Two identical low-end no-name ebay specials.
Motherboards are ASRock K7S41GX. Both machines have 1 Gig ram. One was
running 2003 Server, and had no add-ons. The second ran XP Professional, and
had a Turtle Beach sound card, an M-Audio recording interface, and an AXRock
auxiliary RS-232 port (9-pin). Both had been upgraded with higher-end
heat-sink/fans, since both experienced heat-related issues early on.
Finally, the server had a upgraded power supply (which I had replaced on the
journey of diagnosing the heat problems.)
A couple of weeks ago, I was working on the XP machine (I think I was
running Adobe Photoshop at the time), and the machine just went dead. (This
is what it was doing when I was experiencing the heat problems, but that was
a while ago). I unplugged it, let it sit a while, and tried starting it -
absolutely dead). I happened to have an old 145W power supply around, so I
swapped it in, and the machine started right up. I started to work and after
a few minutes, my video went dead (monitor LED went from green to flashing
orange). The machine, however, was still running. I unplugged & replugged
it, started it up - I could hear the drives spinning, lights came on, no
warning beeps, but . . . no video (No bios messages, monitor keeps showing
'no signal.) I tried it with another monitor with the same results. So, I
figured that maybe the (on the motherboard) video had gotten fried when the
power supply went (though I wouldn't have expected it to have started fine,
and then died.) I bought an AGP video adaptor, put it in - no change.
At this juncture I figured that I must have fried the motherboard. Since I
really didn't need the 2003 Server machine running just then, I just
transferred my drives, PCI boards, and whatnot into the server machine,
plugged it in, and . . . same damned thing!
At this point I was about out of patience, so my wife took over. She
restored the server machine to its original configuration, and . . . not IT
wasn't working! What the #$@@!?
After some further messing around, we discovered that if we didn't plug in
the network cable (NIC also on the motherboard), we could boot in safe mode.
Moreover, our BIOS was showing a conflict with both the NIC and the Video
contending for IRQ11. (There's no way to set those values in the BIOS, as
far as we could see. I was able to install the AGP video, set it in bios,
the boot in safe mode and change the IRQs (it assigned a virtual IRQ to the
video.) However, it still won't boot if the network cable is attached. If it's
unplugged the machine can boot normally.
The server machine, meanwhile, is dead as a doornail, and won't do
anything - won't even beep when I try booting it with all the RAM removed.
My wife suggested that maybe one of my peripheral cards is the culprit, and
might be damaging motherboards, bus controllers, ??? The thing is, I've been
using these two cards for a bunch of years, in a number of systems, with no
problems.
I guess the next thing I'll try is sticking a PCI network adapter in there,
but I'm still totally in the dark as to what could have caused this. Any
ideas? Thanks.
Joe
developed a modicum of skill diagnosing the more common hardware issues, but
this has me utterly perplexed.
First, the machines: Two identical low-end no-name ebay specials.
Motherboards are ASRock K7S41GX. Both machines have 1 Gig ram. One was
running 2003 Server, and had no add-ons. The second ran XP Professional, and
had a Turtle Beach sound card, an M-Audio recording interface, and an AXRock
auxiliary RS-232 port (9-pin). Both had been upgraded with higher-end
heat-sink/fans, since both experienced heat-related issues early on.
Finally, the server had a upgraded power supply (which I had replaced on the
journey of diagnosing the heat problems.)
A couple of weeks ago, I was working on the XP machine (I think I was
running Adobe Photoshop at the time), and the machine just went dead. (This
is what it was doing when I was experiencing the heat problems, but that was
a while ago). I unplugged it, let it sit a while, and tried starting it -
absolutely dead). I happened to have an old 145W power supply around, so I
swapped it in, and the machine started right up. I started to work and after
a few minutes, my video went dead (monitor LED went from green to flashing
orange). The machine, however, was still running. I unplugged & replugged
it, started it up - I could hear the drives spinning, lights came on, no
warning beeps, but . . . no video (No bios messages, monitor keeps showing
'no signal.) I tried it with another monitor with the same results. So, I
figured that maybe the (on the motherboard) video had gotten fried when the
power supply went (though I wouldn't have expected it to have started fine,
and then died.) I bought an AGP video adaptor, put it in - no change.
At this juncture I figured that I must have fried the motherboard. Since I
really didn't need the 2003 Server machine running just then, I just
transferred my drives, PCI boards, and whatnot into the server machine,
plugged it in, and . . . same damned thing!
At this point I was about out of patience, so my wife took over. She
restored the server machine to its original configuration, and . . . not IT
wasn't working! What the #$@@!?
After some further messing around, we discovered that if we didn't plug in
the network cable (NIC also on the motherboard), we could boot in safe mode.
Moreover, our BIOS was showing a conflict with both the NIC and the Video
contending for IRQ11. (There's no way to set those values in the BIOS, as
far as we could see. I was able to install the AGP video, set it in bios,
the boot in safe mode and change the IRQs (it assigned a virtual IRQ to the
video.) However, it still won't boot if the network cable is attached. If it's
unplugged the machine can boot normally.
The server machine, meanwhile, is dead as a doornail, and won't do
anything - won't even beep when I try booting it with all the RAM removed.
My wife suggested that maybe one of my peripheral cards is the culprit, and
might be damaging motherboards, bus controllers, ??? The thing is, I've been
using these two cards for a bunch of years, in a number of systems, with no
problems.
I guess the next thing I'll try is sticking a PCI network adapter in there,
but I'm still totally in the dark as to what could have caused this. Any
ideas? Thanks.
Joe