I'm guessing a dead motherboard...

[tdenton1138]

Hi there.

My gear is below.

Today I was replaying Half Life Source (had been replaying HL2 + ep1 + ep2 for a few weeks earlier without incident) when my screen froze and I got glitchy loud sounds. No soft reset so press the button. Got maybe two long beeps and won't post. Reset BIOS. Reboot. Won't post and no beeps. Nothing at all from BIOS. Left the cmos reset on for over a minute... Unplug, wait a while, etc. Nothing at all expect the power light going blink-blink-blink endlessly. Video card spools up to max fan like always on reboot, but never settles back down. Pulled ram. Checked for loose components. Looked in manual. No good answers...

Before I assume that at least the board is dead (could it be my power supply?) and start looking for my next upgrade, does anyone have any ideas?

Tad

[Lestat]

sounds more like a corrupt bios not necessarily the hardware of the baord.
if you have other ram try that.
the loud noise you heard when it locked was simply the system locking up
if the ram dont fix it,,, pull everything out and go with the bare minimum
if that dont work,,, RMA it.

[berk]

Ive had the same thing happen to me,try this one...take EVERYTHING apart,clear CMOS,leave for an hour or longer,reinstall.
If that doesnt work..

[CERO]

To know for sure u need actually the test each component seperately....but before u go that root dont take to fast any conclusions. Just try what had been said above.

[tdenton1138]

Thanks for the help... I only have video and audio cards, so I'll pull those (along with the ram) and let it sit for over an hour on cmos reset and see what happens on reboot without those cards in.

If the bios is corrupt, I know I could somehow get a burner and an image for a new bios chip, but I'm not sure that would make the most sense.

I'll report back in a bit.

Thanks again.

Tad

[UZ7]

Try one ram at a time on different slots. I've had a similar problem on two different boards, ended up one of my ram sticks dying on me. Could be a different problem but worth a try. Oh yeah I was playing intense Crysis at the time lol.

[tdenton1138]

Well, unplugged with cmos reset for over an hour with pulled pci cards and ram.

Powered up and *bang* nothing... LED on mobo turns on. Fans all turn on. Power light flashing rapidly. No POST beeps at all.

I think at this point I am going to assume the worst and start hunting for a new mobo. I'm perfectly content to keep my cpu and ram as long as I can get a mobo to push the fsb up to at least 360 (not too hard though I never could get my DFI up to 400). Don't need much else in the way of bells and whistles. Maybe firewire or a legacy serial port would be handy. I'll start hunting around, but anyone want to throw out any suggestions?

Thanks,

Tad

[tdenton1138]

Ok, so it appears that it wasn't the mobo. I replaced my Infinity 975x/g with an Asrock 4Core1600-Twins and I am still dead in the water. It won't even POST. I just bought a new power supply which I will return if its not the issue, but thinking again about the system, it seems that its more likely to be the CPU.

Does anyone have any additional thoughts? I've tried to start the system w/o RAM, video and sound and it doesn't make any difference at all. The system seems to power up okay (Video card fan spools up, etc) and I am starting to get frustrated not having this system up and running.

UPDATE: The new p/s didn't help either. Have I finally killed my 6600? Almost certainly I believe...

[adamsleath]

corrupted hdd? / os?

but youre saying no bios screen.....

mm

cpu does sound logical culprit, but i just dont know.

youve tried isolating ram sticks? ie do you have a bad ram stick?
ie tried 1 stick at a time, in the correct slot of course.
if youre not getting video, how do you know it isnt the vid card?

[tdenton1138]

Yeah, that's kinda how I feel... The system never advances. No hard drive seeking. The stock video card fan, which always starts in 'high speed' mode and then slows down when the system initializes, never slows down. There is basically nothing happening. I am fairly sure I tried one stick of ram. I know I tried none. Seems I should still get something other than nothing.

Will a dead cpu kill a system such that you can't POST at all?

[hellcamino]

With the safe overclock you had on that cpu and their reputation for durability I doubt it's bad . I would suspect ram , video card , sound card and in that order . Unless you like the new asrock I would set it aside and put your cpu and one stick of ram in your old board and try it . If you get a post add components until it doesn't post . If no POST swap sticks and if possible try a known good stick from a working machine . Test your vid card in another pc if possible if still not posting .

[contractk]

I want to see answers to this. My old AMD 3500 download box is in the same boat. Just bought a used mobo to try that out. Same symptoms you have.

[adamsleath]

never slows down. There is basically nothing happening

vid card.
does it show same behaviour in both mobo's?

try a diffrent pci-e power cable from your psu?; anything and everything u can to isolate the bad component anyway.

i dont know if you want to upgrade everything, and then sell the good components
haha probly not, someone around may have an idea.

have you booted without a hdd aswell?

try each individual ram stick, it could be that simple, how do you know both rams arent faulty? although unlikely...
anyway thats why i have a backup rig for isolating problems

ive only ever really had bad mobo's myself. ram sticks can go bad; never had a bad vid card or cpu...meself.
ive never had a bad psu either...but i hear of faulty ones once in a while.

im guessing it's the vid card or the vid card power cable from psu due to the erratic fan speed 'clue' you mentioned. if you have 2 pci-e psu outputs try the alternate one...

[tdenton1138]

With the safe overclock you had on that cpu and their reputation for durability I doubt it's bad . I would suspect ram , video card , sound card and in that order . Unless you like the new asrock I would set it aside and put your cpu and one stick of ram in your old board and try it . If you get a post add components until it doesn't post . If no POST swap sticks and if possible try a known good stick from a working machine . Test your vid card in another pc if possible if still not posting .

I would do that, but:

I tried booting w/o video, ram and sound but with the cpu. I never got a beep out of it. Perhaps that'd be normal? I thought I would get at least some kind of feedback from the speaker... no? Error beeps like I've gotten in the past like 'no keyboard' comes to mind.

[hellcamino]

If you are still doing this inside the case try it outside the case on a piece of cardboard and if you get a POST right away look for what was grounding inside the case . For the beeps I really don't know for your particular board . Do you have any known good components for testing ? I think most boards have a default beep for "short" if the cpu is bad .

[adamsleath]

yeah i would expect some error beeps, rather than silence, so long as yr little speaker is plugged into the mobo. sry i cant help, good luck

[tdenton1138]

Ok. Update: I finally broke down and took my box down to a local repair shop (gasp!!!) to diagnose the problem. My frustration was heading me to pitch the whole thing and start over. It turns out dead motherboard and a dead cpu. I presume one took out the other, but whatever.

Now I'm faced with yet another upgrade (aw, such a shame )... I've got a retail Wolfdale 8400 (5/23/08 batch Q815A092 if that helps) already to try out but haven't opened it yet. I now need a motherboard and ram (?) along with an ATI 4850/70 (don't know if my video is still good, but I want one of these boards anyway). Any recommendations on the mobo/ram? I actually got and haven't yet returned an ASRock 4Core1600Twins-P35, but I'm not sure if that's the right board as its pci-e 1.1 not 2.0 although my understanding is that nothing uses all the 1.1 bandwidth yet anyway... A newer chipset would certainly be more future-proof and that's fairly important to me. I understand there's even a chance that video board won't work on the ASRock.

My goal is a stable o/c on air using my ultra-120 with a 120mm fan. Money isn't so much the issue. I really just want a good bang for the buck... I don't need alot of bells and whistles. Just a good solid o/c.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Tad