Thursday, my wife and I went to her mothers for the evening AGAIN, (this is a problem, but not the one I wish to discuss). When I left, both my machines were turned on and happily churning out BOINC wu's.
When we returned, endless hours later, one was dead. The normal light on the router which shows a machine is connected to a port was out, so I turned on the screen and there was the "No signal" message bouncing about. I think there was a light on the keyboard. There were no fans running on the box.
I pressed the start button and nothing happened. I pulled out the mains left it for a while, put it back in then tried again to start it. Briefly, (less then a second), the disk activity LED and the LED on the floppy drive flashed, but that was it, the power light did not light at all. There is no light on the keyboard. It is in the same state today after several restart attempts.
I put the system together from some old, some new parts last autumn. The MoBo, (ECS P4S5A-DX), CPU, (Intel Northwood 2.533GHz), RAM, (1x128MB 1x32MB), and ATI graphics card, (G-Force II MX-400), were previously in another case together and working fine.
Currently, these parts are in an older case, with a Seagate Barracuda, SMC LAN card, and Antec 400W PSU, (all new in the autumn), a CD-ROM from yet another machine, and the original floppy disk drive. The case has one additional fan installed. In neither machine has the CPU been overclocked, indeed, because of a misunderstanding with FSB values, for half of it's 3 year life, it was clocked at 1.9GHz.
The system has NT4 on it, and basically has just been running BOINC, (Predictor, Rosetta, LHC, SIMAP and Einstein), and has a backup Apache server system on it, although it has never been necessary to have it active. I have a hardware monitor running, and it has never shown any excessive temperature, typically max's out at 45C, well less then my other machine. The box is opened and the CPU fins and fan blades brushed and vacuumed every couple of months.
So my question is, what is wrong?
I can rule out enemy action as our apartment was empty at the time.
The brief flashes from the bootable devices imply the PSU is not totally dead, and why should it be, it is new, and well overated for the load.
I believe the PSU starts when told to do so by the MoBo, (as opposed to the start button connecting directly to the PSU), certainly the front panel switch connects to the MoBo, so presumably at least something is working on the MoBo.
The very quick shutoff suggests something seriously bad has happened somewhere.
Any ideas? (Sadly, I think what has happened may have happened even if I was at home, so "stop visiting your wifes mother", whilst having enormous appeal, may not work).
When we returned, endless hours later, one was dead. The normal light on the router which shows a machine is connected to a port was out, so I turned on the screen and there was the "No signal" message bouncing about. I think there was a light on the keyboard. There were no fans running on the box.
I pressed the start button and nothing happened. I pulled out the mains left it for a while, put it back in then tried again to start it. Briefly, (less then a second), the disk activity LED and the LED on the floppy drive flashed, but that was it, the power light did not light at all. There is no light on the keyboard. It is in the same state today after several restart attempts.
I put the system together from some old, some new parts last autumn. The MoBo, (ECS P4S5A-DX), CPU, (Intel Northwood 2.533GHz), RAM, (1x128MB 1x32MB), and ATI graphics card, (G-Force II MX-400), were previously in another case together and working fine.
Currently, these parts are in an older case, with a Seagate Barracuda, SMC LAN card, and Antec 400W PSU, (all new in the autumn), a CD-ROM from yet another machine, and the original floppy disk drive. The case has one additional fan installed. In neither machine has the CPU been overclocked, indeed, because of a misunderstanding with FSB values, for half of it's 3 year life, it was clocked at 1.9GHz.
The system has NT4 on it, and basically has just been running BOINC, (Predictor, Rosetta, LHC, SIMAP and Einstein), and has a backup Apache server system on it, although it has never been necessary to have it active. I have a hardware monitor running, and it has never shown any excessive temperature, typically max's out at 45C, well less then my other machine. The box is opened and the CPU fins and fan blades brushed and vacuumed every couple of months.
So my question is, what is wrong?
I can rule out enemy action as our apartment was empty at the time.
The brief flashes from the bootable devices imply the PSU is not totally dead, and why should it be, it is new, and well overated for the load.
I believe the PSU starts when told to do so by the MoBo, (as opposed to the start button connecting directly to the PSU), certainly the front panel switch connects to the MoBo, so presumably at least something is working on the MoBo.
The very quick shutoff suggests something seriously bad has happened somewhere.
Any ideas? (Sadly, I think what has happened may have happened even if I was at home, so "stop visiting your wifes mother", whilst having enormous appeal, may not work).