Bennett

Hi, ive had my pc for a long time, and have had no problems with it booting up or loading, everything was normal this morning, i left it on for a while, came back to it and then turned it off normally. in the evening i went to try and turn it on, and it sounded as if it had started to load up, but the monitor did not display anything (the monitor light was like it is when it is in powersave mode).

i must iterate that i had no problems with the hardware before this evening, my specifications are as follows
Windows XP Home
Intel P4E 3.2Ghz
P4C800-E-Deluxe ( My sig say P4P800 but i gave that to a mate and bought this version instead)
80gb Western Digital IDE harddrive and 40gb W/D IDE hd
1GB of DDR400 RAM -single channel, on two 512Mb chips
a standard philips soundcard
128mb ATI radeon 9800 pro
standard dvdRW and CDRW drives
a Jeantech Powersupply ( i dont remember the output of it full well but its name is on my sig i believe, and i know for a fact it has enough output for the P4E series/Prescott series processors)

to look further into the problem i had tried many things, and attempted for several hours to find the source of the problem. it sounds as if the pc is attempting to post when the button is pressed but i cant see any monitor display to confirm this, also, when starting up, i attempted to press the numlock key repeatedly, the light came on and off until about 5-10seconds where it would freeze, i assume it had crashed at this stage (edited, check last paragraph).

what i have tried...

• Removing ALL hardware, and add it to ensure they are all getting power
• reapply thermal compound to processor (it was JUST incase, but not necessarily relevant)
• Swap PSU unit over with another
• attempt differnt RAM allocations, including startup with only 1 chip
• Remove CD/DVDdrive power, and power up PC
• Swap Monitor over with another
• Attempt differnt Hardrive allocations, including one harddrive, both harddrives, one on the RAID setup (the raid driver had been enabled prior to the problem)
• Removal of Philips sound card & startup
• Removal of Mobo Battery to reset CMOS
• Startup With minimal components (cpu, graphics card, keyboard & mouse)

i have asked many friends about this problem, and some have pointed me towards the AGP card being dead, i know the card is recieving power as the fans are spinning, same with the physical drives, etc, also the psu providded adequet power for the mobo given the hardware on it, the voltages and Vcore were all aceptable values when i last checked. i have not been able to see if the grapics card is dead because i do not have a spare agp card, and the mobo does not support onboard display. i also get no post beeps.
After the numlock light froze on its setting, i tried ejecting the disk repeatidly to ensure it had actually frozen but the drive went in and out regardless of the numlock light not changing(not crashed maybe???). id really appreciate any help i could get.

Bennett

*note* i found my old radeon 9000 graphics card and attempted to plug that in, but the problem remained

Doby

You certainly have done a very good job of troubleshooting and narrowing down this issue, Because you have tried it with minimal components and swapped ram,video card and psu that would leave only the motherboard or cpu.

Make sure a case speaker is connected and remove the ram and power on, the board should beep, replace the ram and remove the video card, the board should beep.

If you receive no beeps this is a indication that the motherboard is bad but I would remove the cpu and check for any signs of damage

Bennett

thank you for the reply, i realised upon reassembling the pc i left out the 4pin system speaker, i plugged it back in and started up without the ram- and then without the ram and graphics card, no beep on all accounts, im guessing its pointing to the motherboard as u mentioned, i also checked the cpu when i reapplied the thermal compound to the heatsink, all pins looked to be intact and had no problems. i have a spare motherboard but it does not cater the needs of a P4 prescott that is more than 3Ghz so i can not be completly sure that trying tha motherboard would rule out any problems. seems im in for some shopping:(