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

[AnsonAS]

Is simple de.... using othe cpu to install a new bios for ur motherboad.... before that flash the bios first....

 

[michaelb664]

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.

 

[ravi_prabhe]

i am confuse that you givening me supoor or u want support?

 

[michaelb664]

i am confuse that you givening me supoor or u want support?

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.

 

[helenhunt]

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

 

[sliptapg]

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.

 

[beachcandy2]

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

 

[miradorm]

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.

 

[worn_and_wicked]

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:

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.

 

[akung99]

For anybody still looking for why the motherboard doesn't give any beeps, let me share with you this little tidbit I found in my motherboard documentation:

After you plug in the main power connector, there is another one you may have missed.

The second connector will either be an 8-pin or a 4-pin. This is the auxiliary power connector found next to the CPU and you do not need an 8-pin plug there unless you are using a high end CPU, or if the system will be overclocked.

Failure to plug any 4- or 8-pin connector will result in the system not giving out any sort of display or POST signals.

Once I plugged in the 4-pin connector, I got my beeps. Check your motherboard manual for the pin-out to see if this is what you might be missing.

Hope this helps

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!

 

[Guest]

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 !

 

[Guest]

Ops meant Power Cable, not Power Supply :d

 

[jsfospdfkds]

Please add me to the list. System has worked since March of 06. A couple of weeks ago after a shut down it would not start. The fans would run HARD, the amber light which I associate with the hard drive activity would come on solid, there was no video, the amber light would go out. NO BIOS. I shut down and disconnected everything. I opened the unit. I then hooked everything back up and it started. The problem would come back after a shut down off and on. I noticed that with a good start, the fans immediately slow and quite and the amber light blinks as the system boots and the video comes up for a normal start sequence with XP. I decided to test the battery and found that while less than 3 volts, it was not much less. I changed it anyway. First reboot was successful. Problem returned. I had remembered seeing some white spot in the video, like snow, just prior to these start up problems. So I figured that I had a bad power supply. I replaced that. Good first start. Then problem returns. Like the rest of you I am stumped. That's what's brought me here. So far I've not seen anyone actually solve the problem. Because of the fact the fans all run so hard during a bad start, I am wondering if there is some sort of defective temp sensor that is keeping the system from starting to protect itself. At any rate I'll keep searching and if I find something I'll post back. P.S. I did try to start the system with a bootable usb device, but did not even get to bios.

Nubi

you can change your motherboard instead to change any thing

 

[Nebulahawk]

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.

 

[Nebulahawk]

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?

 

[HeWhoWalksAmongUs]

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

 

[lawrence_38]

Hey Westom! I believe I have found my problem & it's not with the psu. It's a problem with the bios configurations. I've been doing some research on this matter & i'm thinking the person who owned this before might have tried to reflash the bios & it locked up on him. I did some Googling & the new bios updates from other viewers who flashed it to their similar desktops but another model with the same Foxconn NAPA GL8E had the same problem as mine. They had to take the computer to the shop & have them reconfigure the bios. to get it up & running again. Now I believe I could perform it if I could only figure out how to use BartPe software & create a bootable cd & burn it using my LightScribe DVD/RW drive on working computer then pop it into my HP machine. The reason I think it might work cause when I turn on my HP machine & all power goes to all my hardware the DVD/RW drives starts flashing rapidly so I know thats how the bios is configurated in the bios ofthe HP machine. I'm not too familiar with how to create the bootable cd in the BartPe software but i'm trying to lean. It states it can also be done in a MsDos environment. Man! thats way over my head on how to do it. Have you performed this prodedure before? Thanks for any comments on this matter. David

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

 

[Guest]

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...

 

[Guest]

"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.

 

[Guest]

Same problem here, solved by changing power cord to PSU !!!!! Hah, check your cables guys!

 

[alayx]

Hi folks, all these things could be bad ram. My main box worked perfectly till it started having random shut offs etc. Replaced ram with some spares I had no more issues, sent the bad stick off for replacement; yeah lifetime warranty. Power supply can also go wonky for no reason, again have sparest to test but more than likely it's a bad memory stick. Swap sticks around or remove them all and put one in at a time, good way to test.

OMG this work for me thx for the tips~

 

[Guest]

I'm curious what progress you've made, since I'm in a very similar boat.

I'm at work right now, so I can't rattle off my system specs, but they aren't too different from yours besides an Intel dual core, both gigs being Crucial, and both drives being SATA (primary is a single drive, secondary is a striped RAID). Oh, and the MB is a P5n32-E SLI .

Like you, the biggest detail is that the system worked (more or less) perfectly for the past 18 months, other than the occasional burp. I've made no significant hardware changes for months, and other than some drivers, no big changes to software, either (running XP SP2, 32 bit).

The chronology of my pain:

Yesterday morning, system behaved normally. While it was idle (I was walking over to wake it up), I saw a BSoD (my first in months). Started to reboot, and when I came back a few minutes later, saw a dreaded "System drive failure, insert boot disk" or something equally heart-stopping. Figured my C: head crashed, but didn't have time to troubleshoot.

Came back later, flipped on the power, BIOS POSTed, then went blank. I could hear a faint, regular clicking that sounded like it was coming from the HDD, but the dreaded disk failure didn't come up, just nothing (I may not have waited long enough).

After that, every time I cycle the power, I get what you get: fans spin, MB pilot light is on, no POST, no beeps, no video signal, even my keyboard lights stay dark.

I haven't started disassembling the system, yet, especially after reading so many people saying that wiping the CMOS did nothing. First up, I'm not even sure if my problem is my HDD, my MB, both, or neither, and I'd rather not spend the next month replacing everything piecemeal by trial and error.

Sorry if I'm hijacking your thread, but yours is the first I've seen that relates to a previously working system instead of a fresh build.

 

[rmatheson_57]

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

 

[rmatheson_57]

This machine ran beautifully for over a year. For several months now, this homebuilt machine would occasionally fail to boot or restart, but it's gotten to where it will successfully POST and boot maybe one out of 20 times. As of tonight, it will not boot no matter how many times I try. There's power - but no beep, no BIOS screen, just PSU fan, CPU Fan and case fan spinning. Pulled the board, and saw no sign of shorting.

Here's the specs:
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Dual-Core - 2.2GHz
Motherboard: Asus M2NBP-VM
2gb RAM (two sticks, 1 Patriot and 1 Crucial, tried together and individually)
320 gb SATA Hard Drive
160 gb IDE Hard Drive
LG DVD-RW IDE optical drive
Primo P4 ATX Mid Tower Case with 500w Power Supply
Added a GeForce 7600 PCI x16 for OS X
Added a Realtek 8139 PCI ethernet card for OS X

I am NOT doing any overclocking.

Thing's I've tried:

-- CMOS Battery (CR2032) was dead, at least my tester showed it just in the red, right below the green, so I thought, "AHA!" and went to get a new battery today. Tested it before installing, it showed a full charge. Did the jumper thing on the motherboard that clears the CMOS cache. Put in new battery - no difference. Dammit!

-- Backside of motherboard shorted against the case? I pulled the motherboard, which was carefully stood-off when I installed it, completely out of the case, laid it on a dry towel, and connected only the 2 power connectors to the board, monitor to the on-board video connector, and one stick of RAM (tried both sticks, one at a time). Attempted to power up to see if I'd get the POST beep - it should POST and show me the BIOS screen even if no drives are connected, right? But nothing. Just the PSU, CPU and case fans come on. No beep, no BIOS screen.

-- Power Supply? Pulled the power supply motherboard connector. Using a paper clip, I jumped the green and black pins to power up the PSU while the connector was unhooked. The PSU fan runs fine. With a digital multimeter, I tested all pins on the 24-pin ATX power connector, plus the 4-pin CPU power connector. All the voltages are correct. the 3.3v, 5.0v, and 12.0v values are all spot-on. I realize that is with no load, but it is something.

-- When the machine was running in XP, the ASUS motherboard monitoring app showed all voltages and temperatures to be normal. I rarely saw the CPU go above 45 Celsius.

-- Seating of RAM, Video Card, Ethernet? Pulled everything and re-seated it. Tried both RAM sticks, one at a time.

-- IDE Issue? Tried every possible permuation of Master/Slave, Primary/Secondary on the IDE chain with my IDE devices, plus every IDE cable I have lying around (which is quite a few). Also tried no IDE at all. No difference.

I'm at my wits' end! I am thinking the board is dead, since the PSU seems to test out, and on the rare occassion when the machine does boot normally, it runs with perfect stability for days and days in either XP or OS X, never had any sudden shutdowns out of nowhere.

Thanks for any help, all you Obi Wans out there.

 

[rmatheson_57]

This machine ran beautifully for over a year. For several months now, this homebuilt machine would occasionally fail to boot or restart, but it's gotten to where it will successfully POST and boot maybe one out of 20 times. As of tonight, it will not boot no matter how many times I try. There's power - but no beep, no BIOS screen, just PSU fan, CPU Fan and case fan spinning. Pulled the board, and saw no sign of shorting.

Here's the specs:
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Dual-Core - 2.2GHz
Motherboard: Asus M2NBP-VM
2gb RAM (two sticks, 1 Patriot and 1 Crucial, tried together and individually)
320 gb SATA Hard Drive
160 gb IDE Hard Drive
LG DVD-RW IDE optical drive
Primo P4 ATX Mid Tower Case with 500w Power Supply
Added a GeForce 7600 PCI x16 for OS X
Added a Realtek 8139 PCI ethernet card for OS X

I am NOT doing any overclocking.

Thing's I've tried:

-- CMOS Battery (CR2032) was dead, at least my tester showed it just in the red, right below the green, so I thought, "AHA!" and went to get a new battery today. Tested it before installing, it showed a full charge. Did the jumper thing on the motherboard that clears the CMOS cache. Put in new battery - no difference. Dammit!

-- Backside of motherboard shorted against the case? I pulled the motherboard, which was carefully stood-off when I installed it, completely out of the case, laid it on a dry towel, and connected only the 2 power connectors to the board, monitor to the on-board video connector, and one stick of RAM (tried both sticks, one at a time). Attempted to power up to see if I'd get the POST beep - it should POST and show me the BIOS screen even if no drives are connected, right? But nothing. Just the PSU, CPU and case fans come on. No beep, no BIOS screen.

-- Power Supply? Pulled the power supply motherboard connector. Using a paper clip, I jumped the green and black pins to power up the PSU while the connector was unhooked. The PSU fan runs fine. With a digital multimeter, I tested all pins on the 24-pin ATX power connector, plus the 4-pin CPU power connector. All the voltages are correct. the 3.3v, 5.0v, and 12.0v values are all spot-on. I realize that is with no load, but it is something.

-- When the machine was running in XP, the ASUS motherboard monitoring app showed all voltages and temperatures to be normal. I rarely saw the CPU go above 45 Celsius.

-- Seating of RAM, Video Card, Ethernet? Pulled everything and re-seated it. Tried both RAM sticks, one at a time.

-- IDE Issue? Tried every possible permuation of Master/Slave, Primary/Secondary on the IDE chain with my IDE devices, plus every IDE cable I have lying around (which is quite a few). Also tried no IDE at all. No difference.

I'm at my wits' end! I am thinking the board is dead, since the PSU seems to test out, and on the rare occassion when the machine does boot normally, it runs with perfect stability for days and days in either XP or OS X, never had any sudden shutdowns out of nowhere.

Thanks for any help, all you Obi Wans out there.

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