Issues with motherboard? No idea.

[s3rv0]

For 2 weeks my computer HAD been running just awesome. Unfortunately, yesterday morning, I went to start the machine up, and got othing. It was like the dead motherboard the first time I had the machine assembled - the machine was on, but no POST beep, no video output, nothing. Just a dead machine. So, this time, I feared the worst, and shut it down and tried to start it again. Nothing. I tried one last time and, somehow, it started up, POST beep and all. I tried to recreate problem, but couldn't get it to do it again. I was hoping it was a hiccup.

Then, today, I had to start/restart it about 8 times to get the POST beep and a proper boot. Once it's up, though, it's perfectly stable and runs great. I'm in the middle of some googling to figure out what the heck is going on, because if the motherboard was toast, by rights it shouldn't start at all. It makes me think it may be something else, hopefully minor enough that I can fix it myself.


This seems pretty darn weird to me. So far, I can't figure out the issue, but I'm really worried that one of these times she just won't start up at all.

Thanks for your help everybody.

 

[J-Wall]

I would boot to CD and run diagnostics from there. You're going to want to enter the BIOS and change the BOOT ORDER to make sure CD-ROM is first. After running the diags you can enter the BIOS once again and default back to the original boot sequence.

Check out Ultimate Boot CD and if you are unfamiliar with those diagnostic tools, just google them to find more info. If you have any specific questions I can help answer them for you.

Good luck!

 

[Wombat]

It depends how close to "nothing" it's getting when it fails to boot. Does the fan on the CPU spin at all? Even for a split second when you hit the power button?

Also, take a look at the motherboard, and see if anything looks weird. Depending on the motherboard, you may see cylindrical capacitors on it. If any of them look like they are starting to swell or inflate, that's a bad sign.

Could also maybe be a power issue. POSTing is one of the biggest demands on a PSU, and if that guy's starting to go, then booting could be hard for it. CPU fan, case fans, they can all tell you something.