PC fails to post!

[Rosco151]

Okay, so it turned itself off at some point yesterday morning after working just fine for a couple of hours. Not sure exactly how that happened, just left the room, came back later and it was shutdown, neither me or the missus had done it.

When I hit the power button, the fans and lights all come on, but that's it. Nothing feeds through to the monitor, no hard drive activity, it just sits there blowing air around and glowing a lovely shade of blue. Nice ambience, but that's not really the desired end result.

My first thought is that the motherboard is at fault. It's a DFI Lanparty NF4 SLi-DR, the 4 red status lights on the MoBo are all lit up. Opinion varies as to what that means. It's about 4 years old, maybe five (not sure tbh).

My second thought is that possibly the BIOS is to blame. Or rather, CMOS in this case. I've found a guide to resetting CMOS, but need to dig up a PS/2 keyboard to follow it.

My third thought is something along the lines of "Bugger, this could cost." It's a socket 939 MoBo, try finding one of those around these days. The local supplier I asked put the phone down to laugh when I asked if he had any. New CPU will be required as well I think.

Any thoughts welcome on this...

 

[Shugster]

Try a new power supply, they seem to last about 4 years before giving up.

40 quid for a new one.

 

[pie sandwich]

What I would do first is take all the RAM out except one stick, and try to power up, if that fails , move the stick to a different slot and repeat and also try with different RAM sticks.

Does it make any sort of beep when you start it up ??

Disconnect and reconnect all the cables, and see if that makes a difference.

 

[Ex-Bay]

When the same problem happened to me, it was the PSU at fault.
Checking the seating of the RAM can't do any harm, either.

 

[steve_k243]

Check

RAM seating.
Connectors to MB, HDD, CD/DVD
Check presence / spec of HDD in BIOS. (if you can get that far)

Unplug Ipod! (sounds stupid but my PC won't boot cleanly with it connected)

 

[SirSaltyHelmet]

Take it into work mate! Comms guys will look at it, they may even have a PS2

 

[techie_tubby]

Havin a PS2 aint gunna help wth his pc fault lol. Yea ask the IT guys an see if they can help, my advice is if it isn't reaching post, is unplug any upgrade you hae put in recently, i'e new graphics cards, sound cards as that can affect your start up.

 

[Jenga]

You haven't got something like a USB hub connected have you? I bought a little advent one and the pc doesn't want to boot up at all when it's plugged in on power on. I get fan activity and my front panel LEDs light up but that's about it. I have to unplug the hub power for a couple of secs while powering on the PC to get the thing to boot.

Bizarre, I know, but it all adds to the character of the thing!DT_Xtremez_14:

 

[grumpyoldb]

Something stoopid like leaving a dvd in the drive can stop it from booting.
Worth a quick check!

 

[Rosco151]

Wow, plenty of response, wasn't expecting all that!

'kay, in the order they came:

Shugster and Ex-Bay - PSU is a good point. I seem to remember having troubles about two years ago where the graphics card said it wasn't getting enough juice. That seemed to resolve itself, but maybe it's given up at last.

Pie Sandwich - Have been through all the connections, seems fine. No beep, nothing whatsoever there. Have reseated both RAM sticks and tried one at a time to no joy!

Steve_k243 - Can't get as far as BIOS! I'm wondering if BIOS is the problem (or CMOS in this case). I read something that if BIOS isn't right, the machine will 'stall' before it even gets as far as posting.

SirSaltyHelmet - Had a comms guy take a look, scratched his head a bit, we agreed most likely the MoBo, failing that the PSU. Have grabbed a ps2 keyboard from work, wondering if a 'proper' CMOS reset will do the job here...

Techie_tubbie - Haven't put any new parts in this for nearly a year now, last time was new CPU and Gfx card.

Jenga and grumpyoldb - No USB hub and no DVD in the drive that hasn't been in there any number of times before.

Cheers all for the answers and opinions, I think it's helped narrow the culprit down. Either PSU, RAM, BIOS (CMOS) or MoBo. Have borrowed a temporary tower from a friend, think I will see if I can put as many of my components in that and see if stops working with them in. That could ID a suspect. If all okay there, try the CMOS reset.

Something to keep me busy anyways!

 

[lilgurn]

The graphics is the first thing to post before the bios takes control and carries on the self checks. Generally if you dont hear a beep it means the bios hasnt got control yet and so cannot error. If you have a graphics card in there then pull it out, easiest thing to check. Other than that it might be easier to buy a new machine. I can do you a cheap ex-school P4 base unit from work (this surely isnt spam, but if it is regarded as so then please delete the post... Thank you) if it comes to it...

(p.s. I'm still a civvie techie for 2 months *ALL GOING WELL*)

 

[Shugster]

The graphics is the first thing to post before the bios takes control and carries on the self checks. Generally if you dont hear a beep it means the bios hasnt got control yet and so cannot error. If you have a graphics card in there then pull it out, easiest thing to check. Other than that it might be easier to buy a new machine. I can do you a cheap ex-school P4 base unit from work (this surely isnt spam, but if it is regarded as so then please delete the post... Thank you) if it comes to it...

(p.s. I'm still a civvie techie for 2 months *ALL GOING WELL*)

Sounds a bit funny that Lilgurn.

The motherboard will carry out internal self tests before looking at things attached to it.

Agreed the Graphics card could cause a halt, but you would hear a beep code anyway that the card had failed to respond to being interrogated.

Look here...

http://www.pchell.com/hardware/beepcodes.shtml

 

[lilgurn]

http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic113137.html

Thanks for the opinion but I have always been taught that graphics is the first check as it is not handled by the BIOS like the rest of the POST and is handled by the graphics card (if installed). The BIOS will then initiate the rest of the checks when it has the all clear from the graphics. In some systems this will cause a whirring like a revving sound before the Beep (Fan test on the Graphics Card)

Check the link

 

[Shugster]

http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic113137.html

Thanks for the opinion but I have always been taught that graphics is the first check as it is not handled by the BIOS like the rest of the POST and is handled by the graphics card (if installed). The BIOS will then initiate the rest of the checks when it has the all clear from the graphics. In some systems this will cause a whirring like a revving sound before the Beep (Fan test on the Graphics Card)

Check the link

The BIOS determines if the video card or onboard video is working.

Yes a Graphics card has its own firmware that will test the card itself, it will then tell the motherboard that it is OK and ready to talk with the motherboard.

You have to test things in order, therefore the bios might only check that the Graphics card has come out of a reset state by setting a single output high or low to indicate it is ready.

It would be nuts to check something that is accessed via various buffers without checking things directly attached to the CPU itself first.

 

[Rosco151]

I'm not seeing or hearing anything unusual from the Gfx Card (no fan revving or such). Certainly not getting any kind of beep code either.

The motherboard is a DFI Lanparty NF4 SLi-Dr, and has a set of diagnostic lights. Each light indicates a particular stage of start-up.

No lights - System boot-up
1st - VGA detected
2nd - DRAM detected
3rd - CPU detected
4th - System start-up

When I hit the power, all four lights are on from the get-go. I have observed each light coming on in order when the system boots as it should.

Opinions I have found say that 4 red lights indicate that either CPU is dead or BIOS is to blame. I have tried my old CPU, which I only replaced about a year ago for the sake of upgrade, still nothing. Have tried a 'proper' CMOS reset for 15 minutes, only other option at this point is an 8-hour CMOS reset. Worth a go.

At the moment, MoBo looks like it's gone. However, I still think it's possible that the PSU could be at fault here. Going to try the PSU from my temporary tower and see if it works

Update - Okay, different PSU didn't work, and even tried pulling the graphics card to see what happened, no change, still just those four red lights.

 

[Justacabbie]

Might be far from the right direction but if your boot sequence is cdrom then hdd, then you should try a rescue disc like bartpe (Google it). My burds pc was well and trully fooked a while ago but it would look to the cd drive before crashing. Used my lappy to save a bartpe disc and shoved that in her pc at boot. It runs without windows but then you can do cmd stuff (and other things above my knowledge level) so I ran chkdsk and it found loads of stuff bolloxd preventing it from booting. Anyway it fixed her pc and ensured "favours" aplenty for saving her a load of dosh for some tw@t to do the same thing at PC world.

Pls PM me if this works. Good luck

 

[monobrow]

Might be far from the right direction but if your boot sequence is cdrom then hdd....

Power on self test comes before anything so all the user would be seeing is a black screen, hear a few beeps and nothing....

 

[Rosco151]

And at the moment all I'm getting is power on and no feed to the monitor. No, not a black screen, the monitor just sits there on standby and doesn't display anything whatsoever. No hard drive activity, no error beeps, just status lights on the MoBo and the fans are going.

 

[grumpyoldb]

That sound like the PSU has failed.

 

[Rosco151]

I'm leaning more and more towards that myself. I need to make a solid decision whether it's my MoBo or my PSU that's failed, tried using the one from the temporary tower I've been loaned by a mate, but wrong connectors.

I'll have a word around and see if someone has a compatible PSU that they know for sure works. Failing that, is there any way I can test my PSU to see if it's the issue? (Voltage metres, whatever...)

Just been digging through my spare parts and found a 20 pin connector that should hook up to the temporary tower MoBo, so the other thing is to see if my PSU can power that unit.

Not a completely level ground for the test, as pretty much every part in my tower are higher spec, so I guess if it's only just failing to power my unit, it could still power the other which has less power requirements? Worth a go, if the temporary tower fails to spark it could only mean my PSU is completely cooked.