Motherboard gone bad or CPU dead?

[wiseguy]

Greetings,

Ran into a little problem with my system...if you can call not booting up a "little problem".

I leave my system on most of the time and the other day I went to use it and noticed that
the light on my optical Explorer mouse was out. I moved it around thinking my system had
gone into sleep mode or something, monitor stayed blank and LED on the monitor blinked
yellow indicating it was not getting any signal. So, I rebooted....

After reboot, I could hear the drives spin up, but no beeps, no BIOS screen, no lit LEDs on
my keyboard, mouse was still dark, still no signal to the monitor (LED continued to blink), and
I noticed that my powered USB hub had no indicator lights lit up. I checked inside the case:
fans were spinning in the PSU, case fans were going, CPU fan was spinning, and fan on video
card was spinning, the LED on the mobo was green.

I shut down, pulled the power cord, swapped out the video card, pulled the audio card and
PCI ATA controller. Plugged cord back in and attempted to power up...no change.

So, I figure that it's either the motherboard or the CPU. I have not been overclocking and
I have a good PSU. Here are the components:

Asus P4S333
P4 1.8 Northwood w/stock fan
2x256MB Kingston DDR2100
AIW 8500DV
Soundblaster Value!
ATA100 PCI controller card
five (5) hard drives (3x120GB, 1x80GB, 1x40GB)
Cendyne/Pioneer A105 DVD-R/RW
Memorex ? 48X CDRW
Afreey or Lite-on 10X DVD-ROM
MS Internet keyboard PS2
MS Explorer Optical USB
Mitsubishi DiamondPro TXM91
Enermax EG651P-VE
XP Professional
650W UPS

System has been acting a little unstable lately, it would not lock up, but I would click on
things in XP and they would not seem to start, but I would see an instance of them when
I checked in task manager. I would go to burn a DVD and Nero would get to 1% and just
not go any further, timer kept going, drive was locked, LED lit, but burn would not go any
further. Also, at times, the LEDs on the CDRW would light up as though the system was
trying to access the drive even though I was not doing anything related to the CDRW.

So, no beeps on bootup, no BIOs screen, no video signal to the monitor, no USB, no PS2,
green LED on mobo, fans spin, drives spin up...

I don't have another mobo to try the CPU out in, nor do I have another CPU to swap into
the system. I guess I mainly need to know whether there is something I can do to determine
if it is the mobo or the CPU so I know which to replace.

And no, I have not tried to clear the CMOS, just read about that and have not had a chance
to see if that would do anything but I can give it a try when I get home this evening...

Thanks,

John

 

[lobadobadingdong]

unplug power from everything except the mobo, unplug all ide/floppy cables from the mobo, take out your vid card, pci cards, and mem. should leave you with a mobo w/ proc and power. make sure you actually have a speaker for this board (will be a short round item on your mobo close to the power/led pins or you'll need an external pc speaker plugged in with the power/led pins. try turning it on and see if you get beep codes. if not it could be either the mobo or cpu, the only way to troubleshoot further is to get another proc to test with, if you get memory beep codes with a known good proc, then your proc is dead, if no beep codes with a known good proc then your mobo is dead.

cheers :beer:

 

[Zepper]

Boilerplate-01:
. Common causes of failure to boot (no video, no beeps):
1- RAM, CPU and/or AGP video card not seated properly, a bent pin or corrosion - reseat everything.
2- Drive data cable on upside down or only on half the pins or shifted a pin or two (usually Floppy or Zip drives).
3- CMOS needs to be cleared (AC power must usually be disconnected or attempt to clear CMOS may fail) Unless your mobo does not use a power-off CMOS clear - check your mobo manual for specific info.
4- On some new mobos there is a CPU protection feature (esp. on Asus/Asrock Athlon/Socket A mobos) that will not allow the system to start if there is no fan (or a fan without a working speed sensor wire) connected to the fan power connector on the mobo (specifically marked "CPU Fan"). If you tried to start your machine without a fan properly connected, you have to attach a proper and working fan and clear the CMOS before it will boot.
.bh.

 

[wiseguy]

Tried to clear the CMOS to see if that would do anything, but no joy.

I've gone ahead and ordered a motherboard from Newegg and if that
does not solve the problem, then that sort of narrows things down a
bit (i.e. it's the CPU) and I'll deal with that when the time comes.

Might be asking for trouble, but I ordered a refurbed Asus P4PE-X,
but I have had good luck with Newegg refurb stuff and I will look the
board over carefully before installing it just to make sure there is no
obvious signs of damage. It's not a huge upgrade over the P4S333
I am replacing, but I can reuse all of my other stuff without any
problems...a newer board may have needed new RAM and other
things as well and I'm going for a cheap fix to get back up and
running, not looking for a major upgrade and the expense that brings.

Thanks for the suggestions guys...

 

[hairygit1]

Sorry I can't be of more help - but it could also be the PSU. nice and easy to replace. borrow one from a mate's computer for 10 minutes [with your setup, make sure it is at least 400watts.] and unplug all but one of your hard drives.

Also, disconnect your UPS whilst you are trying this

 

[DanTMWTMP]

wait wait..you haven't tried lobadobadingdongboodongdinglobbob's suggestion....all you have to do is yank out the RAM..turn on the computer...hear beep codes? if not, mobo = dead.