I give up!

[Another St Ivian]

I am fairly computer literate, having previously worked for a small company spending my days fixing PC's, but my current problem has so far escaped me;

Initially my computer started proving temperamental on a cold start up. Typically in the morning I would turn the PC on and there'd be nothing, no beeps, no POST, the fans would whirr up and the screen would sit blank. Then after a period of 10 or so minutes I could press the restart button and it would load up as usual. Once booted up I could perform warm restarts as many times as I like and it would be fine. It would just need this 5 to 10 minute period of 'warming up' from cold.
However I came home one evening, having left the PC on during the day I just sat down and started using it, I went to perform a warm restart but shock horror, it wouldn't load as before. From that point it didn't matter what I did, press the power button and it'd sit there running, but remaining completely blank. No POST, no beeps, no nothing.

I have tried swapping the PSU over, varying combinations of PCI cards in and out, variations of drives plugged in/left out and that did nothing. I felt after all that it would most probably be a motherboard fault, so I bought a new Mobo and 512Mb of DDR RAM.
I installed that this evening, pressed the power button and the PC initially loaded...success! I immediately went to the BIOS screen on first boot, changed all the settings to as required, pressed yes to the restart and save settings option, and before I knew it I was back to square 1. I press the power button and it's a black screen.

In conclusion I suspect that, by process of elimination, the fault must be with the GFX card or the CPU itself. The real puzzler is that on swapping the mobo earlier it initially loaded fine.

ASI

[goates]

What did you change in the BIOS? Can you reset the BIOS and see if it works with everything else installed? Does it work fine with only the bare minimum of parts to run (ie. 1 hard drive, 1 CD drive, GFX card, no PCI cards etc.)?

Let us know what model of motherboard and we might be able to help more.

goates

[Another St Ivian]

The BIOS changes were largely things like turning off the on-board sound, setting the clock and other sundries. Just general bits. I reset the BIOS a couple of times, no change.
The first 'power-on', on the new Mobo was done with everything in, so;
PCI: Soundcard, Wireless Network Card
AGP Slot: GeForce 4 Ti4200

The new Mobo is a PcChips M848ALU SKT A, with an AMD Athlon XP 2200+

ASI

[goates]

Can you try it with just the video card connected and use the onboard sound?

My new motherboard wouldn't boot with my TV tuner card in a certain slot, and booting without any PCI cards helped me sort out what the problem was.

goates

[Another St Ivian]

I had a crack at running with just the GFX card and the HDD plugged in. No joy :ouch:

ASI

[goates]

Do you have the latest BIOS update for the motherboard? Try booting with just the motherboard to see if you can get it to the POST screen.

[ShyTorque]

It's the CPU, I'm almost 100% certain.

Why? By a huge coincidence I've just had my Athlon fail with exactly the same symptoms.

I was initially convinced it was the video card as the integral cooling fan turned out to have seized solid. Bought a new card, no difference!

Took it in to my local shop for a check, they thought it was a motherboard failure but tried a different CPU, which worked.

I paid for the new CPU, brought it all home, only for the same symptoms to re-occur within hours. Guess what? A SECOND bad AMD CPU!

Third CPU fitted today has cured the fault.

Hope this helps!

[RWY31]

Hi all,

Sometimes it lies in the memory. Try reseating the DDR's.
I had this problem some time ago.

Good luck.

[spannersatcx]

It could be the HDD, if the HDD fails to spin up or be at a certain temp on boot it will not play ball. Once it reaches the correct speed/temp it will boot as nml. Which may be why once you have left the pc on for a while and hit reset that it boots. Have you got another pc that you swop bits around with?

[ShyTorque]

Assuming that the memory and the video card are seated correctly, the POST check should still work if the HDD is failed. (I think it will do so even if a HDD isn't fitted).

The basic POST check order is for the computer to boot, followed by a check of the video card, so that the display appears.

BTW, my latest episode was the fourth or fifth time I've had an AMD chip fail - I've never had a Pentium fail. Cheap as chips?

[Another St Ivian]

Cheers ShyTorque, I think that's it.

As ST pointed out, it could be the hard drive, but that wouldn't stop the system progressing through the POST check. I've also reseated the DIMM's, Video Card and swapped the Video Card around for another, so I am quite sure that leaves the CPU now.
The clincher is this however; Out of frustration I tapped my knuckle against the top of the heatsink and it booted up! It did promptly fail again, but still, a fair indicator I think.

Cheers,
ASI

[Metman]

Have had similar problems to ASI, have been discussing it with him for the last week or so, but thought I'd run mine past you as well, just for fun as the symptoms are just slightly different. The problems have been getting progressively worse.

If I cold boot, my mobo will boot up, the fans (CPU and PSU) will spin, but no hard disk activity. I've now learned to leave it like that for about 10 mins, then hard reboot. This time, the disks will spin up. I'll go through the GFX card BIOS, Mobo BIOS, hard disks will be recognised, and the first windows progress bar will start. Generally, it will either hang or reboot at this screen if I've not let it warm up long enough, or may hang / reboot at any point during the boot sequence, but I know if it gets past the progress bar, its almost warm enough!

Once I'm in, all appears fine. However I'm now more frequently getting random hangs or reboots, especially when playing media or burning / ripping CD's. Even looking at one of my lowly forums seems to cause it to hang / reboot occasionally now though, and the reboot is accompanied by feedback through the speakers.... which is slightly worrying! Also, if I've left an application open and not used it for a while, the app sometimes crashes.

If I get any Microsoft crash messages, they tend to refer to drivers, however I think thats a red herring.

I've recently replaced the HDD's and PSU, however this has made no difference. RAM seems to be OK, which leaves me with Mobo, GFX card, and processor.

I'm running XP Pro SP2, AMD Athalon XP2000+, 768mb RAM, NVidia GeForce FX5200 256mb RAM.

Strikes me that a fair number of people I know seem to have had similar problems at the same time! Very odd and coincidental...

[ShyTorque]

<I'm running XP Pro SP2, AMD Athalon XP2000+, 768mb RAM, NVidia GeForce FX5200 256mb RAM.>

This setup is identical to mine, before the failure, except mine has 512mb main board RAM.

Mine suffered random lock-ups and crashes, it usually failed as soon as a multimedia file was clicked on. Got many different blue screen failures quoting drivers and memory addresses. Sometimes it would complete a full boot, sometimes not. At least CPUs are cheap just now and a lot easier to fit than a new motherboard.

[Another St Ivian]

At least CPUs are cheap just now and a lot easier to fit than a new motherboard.

Allright matey, don't rub it in! :}

Oh well, I suppose I've been pushed into upgrading after all. The new Mobo was fairly straightforward to fit actually, I'm just not too thrilled at forking out yet more money.

ASI

[Metman]

Thanks ShyTorque - just got to find me a processor now! Either that or go the whole hog and get a new mobo as well :hmm:

[ShyTorque]

< Allright matey, don't rub it in! >

Sorry, didn't mean to - it was just that I was personally spared the trouble and expense of a mobo but instead had two new CPUs fitted inside a week!

Hope everyone gets fixed up.

[Another St Ivian]

I've a vague success to report. The CPU has been replaced with a Sempron 2400+ which works fine with the Mobo.
I turn the PC on, boots up fine, however when it comes to booting Windows up it restarts just at the point when the loading screen would show. I watched the boot up process with the command line option and it restarts at hitting Mup.sys on the boot up. I am planning on reinstalling Windows and seeing if I have a success from there.

ASI

[Toxteth O'Grady]

ASI

Lots of good ideas you can try here. (http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/31874/?o=0)

Clearing CMOS is probably the easiest and quickest to try.

:cool:

TOG

[Another St Ivian]

At last, cracked it!

I ended up backing up and reinstalling XP Pro after a full format. All went fine, am now back up with everything running again and importantly, no problems at all.

So to conclude, I am quite certain that my CPU had died.

Cheers for all the help,
ASI