Dear Friends,

I need some tips for debugging a problem.

A previously working system now won't start. The system powers up with all fans and the power light on the motherboard coming on. At this point, everything stops. NO POST beeps, nothing on the monitor. The hard drive activity light is on solid. It is possible to power off the system by holding in the power switch.

AS there were no POST beeps, I tried to induce some by removing the memory. The system however acts as before with no sound. I also tried booting up with the hard drive unplugged but there was no difference.

The motherboad is a Gigabyte socket 478 with a Celeron processor. There is on-board video.

The only thing I can think of trying is putting in a PCI video card to see if that will get the system aroumd a osible problem with the video.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Sincerely,

Nigel Salway

Nigel Salway, Esq

Interesting. I've just had the exact same problem with my 4 year old Gigabyte 8IK-1100 motherboard (Socket 478, 2.8GHz P4 processor).

I'd been having occasional, random shutdowns for about 6 months, the computer would just suddenly turn off for no obvious reason but it would always work OK (no Windows error messages, etc.) when I started it up again until the last time it happened a few weeks back.

Now, it does exactly the same thing as yours does, everything powers up but nothing happens, no beeps, no POST, no video output. And, the hard drive activity light stays on solid from the instant the power button is pressed.

I tried changing the video card, power supply and RAM (one at a time) with no success. Also, the backup battery on the motherboard is only a few months old.

Fortunately for me, one of my friends has the exact same motherboard and processor as mine which he's recently retired due to an upgrade and he's let me have them. I put my processor on his motherboard and it worked fine so obviously my motherboard has failed in some way. My guess would be that the same thing has happened to you - motherboard failure.

I'm trying to get an electronics genius friend of mine at work to look at my motherboard to see if he can find out exactly what's wrong and maybe fix it. I can't see anything obvious like bulging or leaking capacitors, burnt components, etc. None of the computer shops around here want to even look at it for anything less than $200 with no guarantee of fixing the problem.

Thanks for the update. Sure sounds like my problem is the same as yours. BTW, the motherboard in my case is Gigabyte GA-8I845GV.

The system doesn't belong to me. I will check with the owner to see if he experienced any random shutdowns.

Nigel Salway, Esq

My bet is that the psu has bit the dust.
The fact that you get fans and a power light means nothing.
Seen it many times so please try a different psu and tell me I'm wrong.
While it may be the mobo as Carl experienced, I'm betting on the psu.
It's SO much easier to switch a psu than switch out a mobo.

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Just a suggestion, but it might be cheaper and more efficient to buy a power supply tester. Newegg has some at reasonable prices, at least cheaper than purchasing a new power supply to test. I use mine all the time and it has saved me many hours and bucks. Some of them are quite efficient now, and test voltages not just continuity. The Rexus PST-3 seems to be getting a substantial number of good reviews.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Description=power+supply+tester

Behind every good computer... is a jumble of wires 'n stuff.

I changed the power supply swapping in one that works in another system: Same problem.

SO I presume this needs a new motherboard.

Off to eBAY!!

Thanks to everyone who responded and the suggestions made.

Cheers

Nigel Salway, Esq