Installed vista-32bit ultimate, now no display or bios post

[scottbirdsey]

Built my first system, booted up on first try - ASUS P5E3Deluxe, evga 8800gt, 2x2gb corsair xms3 1300,2 seagate barracuda 320gbs, core2duo 8400, coolermaster 650watt psu, installed vista ultimate x86, everything was running smooth, did vista updates, left computer on overnight without putting it into sleep mode - 8 hours later, next morning, no display and no response at all - fans running etc but not response from keyboard or mouse. rebooted many times since and same thing - no display, no sign of anything happening other than fans on.

Have tried the following -
unplugged all external cables other than power supply and display
unplugged hard drives, dvd-rom, video card
unplugged power supply from the wall for more than an hour

LED light on the motherboard is still on, display turns immediately off when the computer boots up, fans on mobo and video card are running, maybe 2 out of 12 times of trying to boot this up i got a nonstop beeping without any delay between beeps.

IT guy where I work thinks it would be either power supply or motherboard - I would think it couldn't be a windows thing because it wouldnt post even when the hard drives were both unplugged
any ideas people have is much appreciated.

 

[grieve]

I had a similar thing happen to me with Vista64 ultimate...
Ran it for about 6 months, then one morning no responce... couldnt even repair with the CD. I formatted, that resolved the issue.

Perhaps someone knows the answer, I think it is a odd/rare vista bug

 

[scottbirdsey]

update - suspected it was a bad power supply - so I was looking over specs and am almost positive I didn't plug the pci-e cord in - at work so i can't check right now - that would've done it. so probably either the mobo or psu is dead from that. now how to figure out which one...

 

[roadrunner197069]

Nothing should be dead it just needs the power now. Plug it in reset cmos and it should work if that is indeed the case. If not then the PSU most likely failed. It happens!

 

[maximiza]

Could be some sort of hybrid virus. Did you guys have anti-virus?

 

[scottbirdsey]

christ i hope not. i was on vista just to download some drivers, its gotta be the pci-e video card not being plugged in. people were saying these got hot on newegg even when they were plugged in

 

[scottbirdsey]

well i refuse to go back to the strange and disjointed world of the mac. this has to be better

 

[scottbirdsey]

ahh, so I was wrong - the vid card was indeed plugged in to the power supply - I am really feeling like an idiot, I'm doubting myself now - anyone else have thoughts? would a damaged power supply behave like this, turning everything on but not booting anything or displaying anything? or would that be more of a damaged motherboard behavior?

 

[isg84]

Wow... I am having a very similar problem to yours.

Saturday morning I went to turn on the computer and nothing! I have an older system that has been running fine for more than a year;
Asus P5B-E Mobo
E6600 c2d 2.4ghz
4x1gb ram sticks - patriot ddr2 800
main drive is a 36gb raptor

My symptoms are that the PC does not boot up, no display signal, hard drive seems to make the usual noise of starting up and seems to load data for some seconds, then stops, but keyboard does not light up, can't toggle the keyboard locks (you know, the num lock by default).

Tried the following:
-tested the ram sticks one at a time
-unplugged everything except boot drive
-bought and installed a new PSU - no change
-bought a cheap pci vid card, installed, and tried to boot up numerous times, took out the old pci-ex card of course
-tried different cables to connect vid card to monitor
-reset CMOS a few times, according to switching the pin and taking out the battery procedure
-connected laptop to monitor, monitor works fine
-cleaned interior of case and motherboard of dust

I am down to the conclusion that this a motherboard or cpu failure, and I need to get a new one...

 

[isg84]

Oh, and I just found a post on another thread, stating that if the lock leds on the keyboard do not light up or toggle the CPU is the probable cause...
I would think that it would actually be the motherboard at fault...

What do you guys think of this?

Scott: does your num-lock light up on the keyboard, can you toggle the locks?

 

[scottbirdsey]

no signs of life from the keyboard - i also tried all of those things too, def. sounds like basically the same thing..my hard drives sound like theyre doing the same thing. when i plug in a usb flash drive, the led on the drive lights up for just one second and then nothing. tried every combination of unplugging power cables and draining any leftover power out of mobo.

I never would've thought it could be the cpu, but what do I know, it was my first time installing one but I felt good about the install - slid right into the socket, used some of that silver grease between the heatsink and unit etc.. I read the temperature a few times when the machine was working, average of 42 degrees.

I was getting those continuous beeps which I read somewhere meant bad PSU, but I am hesitant to believe them because they only happened maybe twice out of 20-30 times of trying to boot it back up.

Both that CPU(E8400) and the videocard I used have extremely high customer ratings on newegg, hardly any reports of getting bad ones..there were a few reviews of the power supply I used dying out randomly but not much..

something else that might be a signifier - when the monitor is on but not plugged in, the screen will display a text box saying no signal or something like that, and a blue light will be on (lg flat panel), when plugged in the screen will immediately go black and the blue light will go off. so its as if its getting some kind of signal to tell it to shut off..

 

[grieve]

yah, this is why i formatted when this issue happened to me... its faster the diagnosing.

I have not had any issues since the format... was not hardware failure, was 100% OS related.

 

[scottbirdsey]

meh, i took out one of the ram sticks and put the other in the a1 slot instead of a2, now it posts and boots vista but the wireless mouse doesn't function, though bios recognizes that it is a mouse and is plugged into the usb port. fun! also the display looks squished. i dream about stability every night now

 

[grieve]

interesting, that never worked for me.

 

[richardt45000]

I had the same problem with Vista 32 and 64 bit and windows 7 trial version.
I built up a quad computer with nvidia motherboard drivers and a nvidia graphics card.
After a few hours i would get NO DISPLAY warning on my computer wether i was doing something or not.
I replaced the motherboard with a better model, same problem again.
I replaced the Graphics card but same problem.
I replaced the memory with recommend memory from crucile but same problem.
I think its a problem with the graphics drivers and LCD displays.
Over a period of 6 months, i had reinstalled the o/s many times and was pulling my hair out at this point.
I went back to windows xp (32 bit) and no problems.
Has anyone using a CRT display get this problem?