What went wrong - Motherboard or CPU or...

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My homebuild PC (Soyo motherboard with Celeron 2000)after about 2
years of loyal sevice went on strike. When I turn it on, lights are
going on, a red LED of HD is turned on, CPU fun is turning - and thats
it. No BIOS messeges - as matter of fact no messages on screen at all.
How to figure what happen? Should I buy a new MB or new CPU? Are there
any tools that will help me to determine what is the problem?
Any books or Internet sites?

Thanks,

Zalek

 

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<zalekbloom@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:e84e5f2f.0409121751.2e3dd32@posting.google.com...
> My homebuild PC (Soyo motherboard with Celeron 2000)after about 2
> years of loyal sevice went on strike. When I turn it on, lights are
> going on, a red LED of HD is turned on, CPU fun is turning - and thats
> it. No BIOS messeges - as matter of fact no messages on screen at all.
> How to figure what happen? Should I buy a new MB or new CPU? Are there
> any tools that will help me to determine what is the problem?
> Any books or Internet sites?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Zalek

Unplug the computer, clear the CMOS settings, plug it back in and try again.
Repeat three times. If this doesn't help, try a new power supply. It could
be a motherboard or CPU, but if it was one of those, you'd likely get error
beeps. No error beep? Very likely bad power. -Dave

 

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On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 22:44:43 -0400, "Dave C." <mdupre@sff.net> wrote:

>Unplug the computer, clear the CMOS settings, plug it back in and try again.
>Repeat three times. If this doesn't help, try a new power supply. It could
>be a motherboard or CPU, but if it was one of those, you'd likely get error
>beeps. No error beep? Very likely bad power. -Dave

Seems more likely to be a motherboard issue than a power issue. The
power supply is supplying power after all. If it was a dead CPU, I've
seen motherboards that will beep on that issue.
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Something is loose. Check the cards, make sure they
are well seated. Sometimes they may pop out a bit when
the compter is moved, depending on the PCI slot quality,
the quality of case, and how well they're seated. Also, check
to make sure the motherboard is not making any bad contacts
with metallic objects. I think it'll be okay, so don't get out the
credit card just yet. Well, at least every time I've had this issue
it's been one of the above.


<zalekbloom@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:e84e5f2f.0409121751.2e3dd32@posting.google.com...
> My homebuild PC (Soyo motherboard with Celeron 2000)after about 2
> years of loyal sevice went on strike. When I turn it on, lights are
> going on, a red LED of HD is turned on, CPU fun is turning - and thats
> it. No BIOS messeges - as matter of fact no messages on screen at all.
> How to figure what happen? Should I buy a new MB or new CPU? Are there
> any tools that will help me to determine what is the problem?
> Any books or Internet sites?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Zalek

 

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On 12 Sep 2004 18:51:37 -0700, zalekbloom@hotmail.com wrote:
>
>My homebuild PC (Soyo motherboard with Celeron 2000)after about 2
>years of loyal sevice went on strike. When I turn it on, lights are
>going on, a red LED of HD is turned on, CPU fun is turning - and thats
>it. No BIOS messeges - as matter of fact no messages on screen at all.
>How to figure what happen? Should I buy a new MB or new CPU? Are there
>any tools that will help me to determine what is the problem?
>Any books or Internet sites?

First guess from what you've said is a motherboard, though a number of
other things can cause this. First thing you probably want to do is
to strip the system down to it's bare essentials, ie just a processor
+ fansink, motherboard and power supply. At the very least that
should give you some error codes complaining about lack of memory. If
you do get beeps (or some other error code indicating no memory),
gradually replaces parts one by one to see what part breaks things.
If you don't get any memory missing errors (assuming your motherboard
has a method of showing such errors.. some don't), then it's got to be
one of the three remaining components.

Given that you're getting power to LEDs and fans I would guess that
it's probably not the power supply (though that isn't 100% certain).
Processors hardly ever go bad (though it does happen), so that tends
to point to the system board. You might want to have a quick look at
the capacitors on the system board, many boards built around that time
had capacitors than tended to leak after about 1-2 years. I ran into
such a case on my own system board and have seen MANY more at work.
It's usually pretty obvious if you do have leaky capacitors as there
will be some brown goop pooling around them.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

 

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zalekbloom@hotmail.com wrote in news:e84e5f2f.0409121751.2e3dd32
@posting.google.com:

> My homebuild PC (Soyo motherboard with Celeron 2000)after about 2
> years of loyal sevice went on strike. When I turn it on, lights are
> going on, a red LED of HD is turned on, CPU fun is turning - and thats
> it. No BIOS messeges - as matter of fact no messages on screen at all.
> How to figure what happen? Should I buy a new MB or new CPU? Are there
> any tools that will help me to determine what is the problem?
> Any books or Internet sites?

You might want to inspect the capacitors to see if you have the infamous
exploding capacitor problem. I've seen a number of mother boards where the
capacitors have their caps blown off.

 

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zalekbloom@hotmail.com wrote in message news:<e84e5f2f.0409121751.2e3dd32@posting.google.com>...
> My homebuild PC (Soyo motherboard with Celeron 2000)after about 2
> years of loyal sevice went on strike. When I turn it on, lights are
> going on, a red LED of HD is turned on, CPU fun is turning - and thats
> it. No BIOS messeges - as matter of fact no messages on screen at all.
> How to figure what happen? Should I buy a new MB or new CPU? Are there
> any tools that will help me to determine what is the problem?
> Any books or Internet sites?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Zalek

Thanks to all for advices - the culprit was GeForce2 MX400 AGP video
card.
First I tried to clear CMOS (recommended by SOYO) - it didn't help.
Then I started to remove sigle components and see what will happen - I
was waiting to hear two beeps (before there was no beeps at all). I
removed the memory, HD, floppy - after I removed the video card -
suddnly after turning machine on I heard the sweet 2 beeps. I have
some old junk PCs - removed an old PCI video card and put on my PC -
it worked.


Zalek