Do I have a dead motherboard? No beep, no BIOS screen.

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Is simple de.... using othe cpu to install a new bios for ur motherboad.... before that flash the bios first....
 
I was just curious and wanted to take apart my desktop was working fine prior to disasembly. when i reasembled the computer I got a Red Light on mother board no video signal I could turn the computer on but could not power down unless I disconected the power supply. I tried moving the RAM arround and nothing, a mistiake I did make was having the power supply pluged in while I disconected a cable and reconected a cable when I got the cable close to the mother board the red light came on and started the problems, So I am Pretty sure my mother board went bad and if you guys have similar symtoms i'm pretty sure its the mother board since I read everyone's post and just about everything been changed except the mother board, I'm not a big tech just my conclusion, thanks.
 


Sorry my first post; I just meant to leave a post didnt mean to respond to your's, I did change my mother board and it worked fine just to through it out there.
 
I am having the exact same issues as the OP and Sathar. I have tried everything the OP did as well, but I am thinking I will try replacing the PSU first before going through the hassel of getting a new MB. I am curious how this ends up and hope to see the OP post his results on whatever he ends up doing!

SLA Batteries
 
In my experience:

If ram has gone bad in a motherboard, the system will still receive power (lights will turn on for a sec, fans will begin running) and it will BEEP at you during post. It may or may not display.

Another interesting problem I had was with a graphics card I purchased. It had an external power 4 pin plug. It shorted out, so when I had that pin plugged in, power would turn on for a second, then the power would turn itself off.

However, if you are having problems where the motherboard will not receive power (no lights or fans will turn on), I would try switching in a different power supply (powersupply could be broken or switch on power supply could be broken). I would also look at the motherboard itself: any burn marks? Any split/popped capacitors?

Also, maybe one of the power supply cables has shorted somewhere? Another thing to check. Make sure your motherboard is properly grounded.

Hope this helps.
 
Hey there!
I had the same problem so I started taking it apart. I looked under the keyboard and found a small cell battery,(bios or cmos - mother board battery) I tested it and it was dead. I replaced it and it works great now! Mine was a gateway laptop. The battery was hard to find and expensive too. It was a maxell-ml1220 rechargable coin cell (watch battery).
They only last for about 3-5 years.
When you replace it, and if you have the power on, it should power up but it will look like you have messed up your computor but don't worry, just power it off wait a few seconds and then power it back on. It should work fine , if this is your problem. Good luck
 
Situation that cause this question, assuming this is right since happened while at work.

Thunderstorm while at work.
Got home tried to turn on desktop, nothing happened no beeps no fans spinning. Checked breaker on UPS, reset it. Turned on laptop nothing, no beep, just black screen with fans turning on inside and roughly 5-8s would shutdown and restart. Also a third computer had a fried NIC, my dsl router/modem had 3 of the 4 ethernet ports not working as well. I am assuming the damage came through the ethernet, since I kept forgetting to connect the phone line to surge protector.

Since I only really care about the desktop the specs
Asus m3a32-MVP Deluxe Ap/Wifi
AMD 9850
ATI radeon 3870
4x1Gb OCZ Reaper HPC ram
WD Velociraptor
PC P&C Silencer 750

Opened the case, saw the led light slowly blinking, which just tells if it has power or not, instead of a steady glow.

Took the PSU to a coworker, using a multimeter tested the voltages, and they where with spec range for the unit, retested with a atx power tester as well. Got an old P4 system I had lying around disconnected its PSU and hooked the Silencer PSU to it and it fired right up, took the P4 PSU and attached to other system and the led light came on without blinking. System still wouldn't boot with the other PSU, but I also hadn't fully connected everything since that PSU did not have an 8 pin power connector just a 4 pin.
 
For all of you having this problem:
I recently got an old PC with the exact same problem and I fixed it. I don't know if it's the solution for all the cases, but it's a cheap option before trashing your motherboard or PSU.
You need a multimeter, a soldering iron, a lamp and some capacitors.
1. First of all, you should check your PSU. Take a paper-clip, straighten it and short the green and a black wire of the 20-24 ATX connector. The PSU fan should start working. Don't use the multimeter yet, many faulty PSU's work normally under zero load.
2. Take a 12v lamp (you could use one of your car's brake lights). Solder two pieces of wire on the lamp and connect the other ends on your multimeter's leads.
3. Set your multimeter on 20V and connect the leads on:
a. Red lead on yellow wire, black lead on black wire. The lamp should light up and your multimeter should read between 11,2 and 11,8 volts.
b. Red lead on red wire, black lead on black wire. The lamp will barely light up and your multimeter should read between 4,2 and 4.8 volts.
c. Red lead on orange wire, black lead on black wire. The lamp will not light up and your multimeter should read between 2,7 and 3,1 volts.
d. Red lead on black wire, black lead on blue wire. The lamp will light up and your multimeter should read between 11 and 11.5 volts.
e. Red lead on black wire, black lead on white wire. The lamp will barely light up and your multimeter should read between 4,2 and 4,8 volts.
Don't test the grey and purple wires! You could damage your PSU. Also, don't use the black wire that is short with the green one. If the voltage ratings are somewhere between those given, then there is nothing wrong with your PSU.
4. Look carefully on your motherboard for something like this:
close-up.jpg

If any of the capacitors has a bulging top, a yellow or white stain or a broken shell, then replace it with a new one. This step requires some experience, if you are not sure what you are doing, let someone else do it for you. The problem in 95% of non-booting motherboards is leaking capacitors.
5. If you replaced the capacitors and the motherboard won't boot, then throw it away, the problem is some IC or the flash BIOS memory.
 


All I have to say is THANK YOU! After my old power supply died, I swapped in a new 620W power supply and failed to plug the 8pin plug back in, and it never beeped. After reading your post, it did beep and gave me the error codes I wanted to hear. Thank you!
 
If you actually got any luck , u could try disconnecting your computer from the power supply and other USBdevices... Also unplug the BATTERY chipset from the Mother Board. The Battery is located in the right down corner of your mobo. After u have unplugged it, wait for about 4-5 minutes and connect everything again including your Battery. Hope it helps ya ! :hello:
 


you can change your motherboard instead to change any thing
 
I found the 4 pin, but, Before I had it plugged in it worked fine and there was a little white light right above it. Now I'm having the problem the post is about and even though the 4 pin is in now I'm still having difficulties... The light is gone now to, strange.
 
I'm having the original problem of the post. I just got my computer back after a move. After individual testing everything appears fine, but the motherboard is not beeping, and the Bios is not showing up. I tried RAM and looking for unplugged cables but could find nothing. Any additional help?
 
Hi All, Just wanted to share my experience which is almost identical to all of you.
(in short it's the PSU)
I have a 2-3 year old home built PC with
ASUS p5wd2-premium
Corsair 2x2gb
radeon x800 graphics.

The computer has run fine for the past 3 odd years without problems. However recently it went dead and would not startup.

I traced that problem to a burnt connector on the dimm stick. So I replace the dimms from 512 to 2gb sticks.
After this computer ran but only on a cold restart with the power unplugged for 30 seconds or more.
Asus forums and support were about as useful as Anne Frank's Drum kit. They recommended the usual bios reset blah blah.

Eventually after a blue screen or death and one or two sudden black screens. It failed to boot up. It failed to post or beep. All fans and PSU fans came on no problem.

So i thought the MOBO was the problem and bought a replacement p5ql/epu.
However on arrival this had the same problems and I sent it back thinking it was A DOA mobo. £20 later it came back to me with no problems reported.

Luckily the wife has a similar PC. So I gradually changed over components onto the the new mobo until at last everything fired up. I then changed back the components 1 by 1 until I had my old machine completly and working with the old mobo. Re-built the box and started her up. This lasted about 20 mins before black screen.
in short I replaced the PSU and now the machine has been working for 2 days.

It seems the PSU was providing power but not for a sustained length of time. It was the correct rated PSU etc just it had given up the ghost under constant use. It would probably work fine if I tried it now, but will fail soon after.

At the moment she is running on the wifes PSU. Which is a temp measure.
I have bought a new nexus nx-5000 R3 PSU which I will fit.
This will replace my old broken akasa AK-P400FG BLUKV3 with funky blue LED.

Until coming across this forum I was blaming the mobo until this post suggested it could be the PSU.

P.S anyone want to by a hardly used Asus p5ql/epu off me 🙂

Andy
 


the easyest way u can make a boot disk is by floppy a u can do it wirh a dvd burner but its just a wast less if u have a dvd rw than u can do it with the floppy a or cd u need to formate it and in there it will say make boots disk check it from there add in ur flash and rom and restart ur computer and make it boot up to what ever u make ur boot disk out of if dvd make it boot up in dvd if floppy a than make it boot up in floppa u can change it in the bois u can also usesomeone else computer to make ur boot disk than comeback to urs and use it that way make shere some board have bios locks on them will it will not let u fals read ur manual frist and if it says nothing take ur jumper off ur bios reset jumper pin and flash after it is done flashing because it will let u know put the pin back on to nomal ooooo and u will have to rember somethings ur rom name like it will say 100.00hj and ur flash will be like ami034 when ur in dos put them in u can check the name when u download ur flash and rom and u can also rename them to u have to put in the flash code than rom code than hit enter it will search the disk and it will tell u if u have it right or no its easy u dont need a collage dregg eather
 
i have the same problem... no beep.. no bios screenn..
but when i was ease i just pull out the CMOS Battery and it will run... i can believe this it will happen i though if you remove the cmos battery it will no longer starts... but fortunately its running...
 
"On a power supply testing note, I am not even an electronics hack, but I do own a multimeter. I poked my multimeter points into the end of one of the ide cables. red and black, the reading off the power supply that caused my computer to shut down in 3-5 seconds read 17.5 volts and the reading from the one that shut down when I tried to run a program ranged 3-7 volts, I think they were both supposed to read 12. "

Am I wrong or are there some ps that have switched or switching voltages? As long as they are in the ranges on the sticker they are fine unless there is demand on them...or so I thgought.
 
Same problem here, solved by changing power cord to PSU :pt1cable: !!!!! Hah, check your cables guys!
 




OMG this work for me thx for the tips~
 

 
Check your power supply. If it is producing too much power over 12 volts or not enough the mother board will shut down automatically. If that is OK check the tempature level to see if it is too hot which will also cause a shutdown. If you are sure all of these are OK then it is the mother board sensors for heat and you need to replace the board.

Good luck
bobtail
 

 


Look at the power supply and then the motherboard heat sensors. Both will cause the PC to shut down automatically.
 
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