Motherboard dead?

[HillTech]

My boss asked me to upgrade his son's CPU. It would never start. I checked the battery, the power supply, memory chips, and the cables. I finally pulled the 2 HD's hooked them to another computer and upgraded the OS. I put them back in the original CPU, nothing. The fans come on and I have a light, but there is no attempt to boot the HD at all. Would this mean the mother board is toast? I've replaced one other MB, but that was years ago when I was working for the school. I am limited on tools I have now. Is there anything else I should try?

 

[sllewe]

I need a little more info...when you say a fan comes on, do you mean the Power Supply fan, or the CPU fan? Same thing with the light which light?

 

[Richykins]

Also - if you can provide the m/board make a number - that might help. Do you get any POST beeps from the BIOS?

I've had something similar quite recently...

 

[sllewe]

Just in case you dont get a beep code, and its a Dell, look on the back of the case for a set of blinking lights (instead of a speaker on some dell mobos, they have little lights that give out a code)

 

[FlyingAce]

Try resetting the CMOS to default - sometimes there's a jumper on the MB for this or you can just pull out the battery and put it back in. I had a very similar problem, and I did this out of desperation. I thought I had f* everything up, but the bios had just gotten confused.

Good Luck.

 

[Eiko Tec]

Try resetting the CMOS to default - sometimes there's a jumper on the MB for this or you can just pull out the battery and put it back in. I had a very similar problem, and I did this out of desperation. I thought I had f* everything up, but the bios had just gotten confused.

Good Luck.

Ya that very well could be it.

 

[HillTech]

Fans on Motherboard

The fans that I speak of are the following:

Power Supply
Fan on the Motherboard
Fan on Video Card
2 extra fans that have been installed for cooling. One is mounted to the back of the CPU and the other is in a slot. These connect together and then to the power supply.

The light that comes on is a LED 1 light.

Does this help? I would have thought if it can run the fans, there may be hope...

 

[redeyemindtrick]

are you getting any video at all?sounds like the board is working, does it have integrated video? check the vid card. systematically test each component if you can until you find the problem. not to jump the gun, but it sounds to me like it could be a video problem

 

[HillTech]

I get nothing. I don't even hear the hard drives churning. I just get fans and the LED light.

 

[HillTech]

Now I lost the fans

But the LED light still comes on. :dead: Any ideas?

Thank you!

Lori

 

[redeyemindtrick]

what kind of computer is it? what are some of the specs? what size memory module did you put in it? if you put in say 256mb in 1 slot, and the mother board only supports 128mb per slot, then you you will get similar if not the same results that you are getting. take off the side cover and look at the board, it should say somewhere on it what it is

 

[HillTech]

Lost the fans, LED still on.

The MB is a ASUS A7A266 Mother Board. The memory is 128 (2 of them). Cannot figure out why the fans died... I am beginning to hate this thing...

Processor Socket A for AMD® Athlon™ / Duron™ 550MHz ~ 1GHz+ CPU
Chipset ALi® M1647 266MHz FSB chipset with ALi® 1535D+ South Bridge
FSB 266/200MHz Front Side Bus
Memory 2 x DDR DIMM Sockets
Max. 2GB PC2100/PC1600 DDR SDRAM
3 x SDRAM DIMM Sockets
Max. 3GB PC133 SDRAM
Expansion Slots 1 x AGP Pro/AGP 4X
4 x PCI
1 x PCI/AMR Shared
VGA AGP Pro/4X/2X/1X Slot
IDE Ports 2 x UltraDMA/100
Audio (Optional) C-Media CMI-8738 PCI Audio Controller
4-Channel Speaker Mode
LAN (Optional) 3Com® 3C920 100/10Mbps LAN Controller
Special Features Power Loss Recovery, ASUS® JumperFree™, CPU Throttle, SFS (Stepless Frequency Selection)
Back Panel I/O Ports 2 USB
1 Parallel
2 Serial
1 PS/2 Keyboard
1 PS/2 Mouse
1 Audio I/O (Optional)
1 Game/MIDI (Optional)
Onboard I/O Interface Two Headers Supports Additional 4 USB Ports
20-pin ASUS Panel
ASUS® iPanel Connectors
SIR (Integrated Serial Infrared)
Headphone (Optional)
MIC (Optional)
CD /AUX /Modem Audio In (Optional)
CPU /Power Supply /Chassis Fan
ATX Power
IDE LED

 

[redeyemindtrick]

hmmm....dont sound good,sounds like the board is toast, sounds like it was getting some power, but if the board is out, it's very likely that the power is only getting far enough to light that led. might be in the circuitry why the cuurent isn't getting to the ide slots and such. take a second look at the power supply before you rule it out

 

[Samstoned]

at this point given your time in it may be better to buy nother cheap MB
I played around to much with a abit board looked at it close and it had bad capacitors on it .
I give 2 hours to a board now, thats it (unless of course its a dual server)
out it goes.

 

[HillTech]

I agree

I looked up on E-bay and gave the specs to my boss as it is his credit card.

What fun!!!

Thanks everyone for the help and input. I had NEVER had it happen this way before!

 

[reallyconfused]

I read this read as I have almost an identical problem - but my harddrive is getting power - I hear and feel the drive humming.

Just like HillTech, I tried BIOS jumper reset, even put a new battery, but no beeping and nothing on the monitor. Could be the board but could it be the CPU?

Redeyemindtrick and Samstoned, any ideas???

Thanks in advance.

 

[redeyemindtrick]

what exactly is it doing when you try to power it up? is everything appear to be running, i.e, fans, power supply, cpu fan, vid card fan if equipped? make sure the cmos jumper is on the correct pins. are you just getting no video or no power. if the ram stick is not supported then you would get no video, or if the processor was not working you wouldnt get video. what size power supply does it have in it? sorry if i seem to be running in circles, have you tried a different power supply? :giddy:

 

[Kefuddle]

I had exactly the same Symptoms. In my case, by deductive reasoning I nailed it down to my power supply becoming faulty and overpowering a component on the motherboard. This obviously required both a new power supply and motherboard

 

[bakkerrich1979]

same here

i recently built a pc with brand new parts from scratch. The computer ran flawlessly for a few weeks. Then mysteriously it died and i experienced exactly the same symptoms. After extensive research and experimentation, i found that the mobo (motherboard) is dead. The lights come on, all the fans spin, but black screen. I replaced the cpu but no luck. Tested the ram, removed the videocard, hd, and removed the mobo from the case. I created a basic setup ontop of a box with one stick of corsair 2 gig ram utilizing onboard graphics and a brand new cpu. Still no luck. I then tested the power supply with a miltimeter seeing as cables are color coded, black being ground and yellow and red being 6 and 12 Volt DC power supply. The power supply checked out no problem, so logical deduction lead me to believe its the motherboard. The motherboard was an ASUS CROSSHAIR SLI GAMING MOBO...top of the line with LCD POSTER. The LCD poster simply says CPU init...wich is intilialization.....it doesnt even give an error code to look up. What went wrong....who knows....I didnt overheat the board because it was mounted in an very well ventilated case with many fans. It wasnt the power supply because its 850 watt and it checked out....the supply is stable...no voltage fluctuation even under extreme testing.

SO IN SHORT....ASUS IS $HIT AND IF YOU DONT AGREE...BUY AN ASUS MOTHERBOARD.

My next MOBO will be GIGABYTE OR MSI. I sincerely hope that this advice will save one person the headache i endured.

 

[sllewe]

So you got a bad board, I am sure that could never happen with MSI or Gigabyte

 

[Ciiba]

resetting the CMOS should not work, it seem not caused by CMOS.

 

[bakkerrich1979]

i agree

I realize that I am not being fair and impartial, but it totally kills your enthusiasm when you pay alot of cash for parts that die after a few weeks.