Your knowledge has helped me greatly in the past - unfortunately I need help again.
My wife has a 6 year old desktop which I built (with help from this site...) and which now appears to have serious issues.
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA7VM400M Processor: AMD Athlon 2400+ processor. Onboard RAM: 1GB HDD: 240GB Western Digital model (a couple of months old) Peripherals: Wi-fi and a converter to run a standard phone through Skype.
The PC runs 24/7 and this morning it appeared to have crashed during the night and had tried to reboot. However it did not appear to have posted - I reset it and got pretty much no response. It powered down and back up again - all fans are running, HDD is spinning, but no post. The HDD activity light is on constant...
I tried resetting the CMOS via jumper, removed and reinstalled RAM, checked all connections from the PSU to the mobo, but no dice...
I'm thinking either motherboard or processor failure, which is fine given the service both have given. However, before I shell out on a new mobo and processor, I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions or if there's anything obvious I might have missed.
Unplug anything not needed for post.Leave only 1 stick of ram(if more than one)processor and video card.If you now post start plugging things in till the problem reappears.I have seen this behavior from a dying hard drive(even if near new)or even a dead dvd drive.If it doesn't post when stripped down try a different psu.Also check the mobo for any bulging/leaking capacitors.It might be a bad mobo but I doubt it is the processor.I have seen very few actually fail.There are a few things to try even swapping out the video card unless you are using onboard.Good luck these things can be a pain finding the culprit.
Not sure why it does I have had a few of them like that as well as a dead dvd drive.Those are the most common(besides an actual mobo problem)that I see with those symptoms.Carl is probably right but I like to make sure before trying to replace a mobo and ending up with the same problem.Older mobos are a pain to find and if you can't then a reinstall is likely with a replacement and that most people don't want to do.Unplugging things is easy and a quick way to eliminate devices as the problem.
$40 later I'm pretty much back in action. Only problem is that I can get the external USB ports or a 6-in-1 card reader to work. Everything looks OK in Device Manager but the drives won't show up in Explorer.
Anyone come across anything similar?
As always, all help and suggestions greatly appreciated...
#9, "RE: PC won't post..." In response to ratso-rizzo (Reply # 8) Wed Apr-29-09 03:17 PM by Carl D
Just out of curiosity, did someone fix the motherboard for you? If so, did they say what was wrong with it?
I'm just wondering because I have the 2 old Gigabyte motherboards that I mentioned in my earlier post sitting here and I'm ready to throw both of them in the bin.
No-one here (in Perth, Western Australia) is prepared to look at them for less then about $200 with no guarantee of finding or fixing the problem. I have since bought a new motherboard, processor, RAM, etc. But, if I could get the 2 old ones easily fixed, I can use them again.
