Electrofreak
2004-12-15, 04:28 PM
So, last night I was playing EVE, chatting on IRC, AIM etc. Just a normal night. Went to bed around 3 AM and shut down the computer.
This afternoon after getting up, I turned it on, and it won't even POST. The fans spin, the hard drive whirrs, the CD-ROMs spin... but no POST beeps and the monitor remains in standby mode.
Naturally, I was pretty pissed. After throwing a few things, I reset the CMOS, jiggled some wires, and raged a bit. No go. I raged a bit more, and reset the CMOS again. Lo and behold, it boots. As it makes its way to the Windows loading screen, I breathe a sigh of relief and head downstairs to grab a drink to celebrate. I return upstairs to see that it has reset itself, and is once again, not POSTing. I tried resetting the CMOS a few more times, removed and reinstalled a stick of RAM, checked to make sure that the mobo was getting power, that the video card was seated properly, all that great stuff. Nothing. So, my computer lies dead while I write this from a Pentium 200mhz with a 24000 dialup connection.
My guesses:
Sudden Motherboard death. Its been almost exactly a year since I bought the motherboard (A Shuttle AN50R) give or take a week, and I suspect that it just decided to die on me. Strange how it booted the one time but none of the others tho. I gave the mobo a cursory check, and I don't see any popped caps or anything visually wrong with it.
CPU problem... perhaps some Arctic silver 5 crept underneath the die and shorted some pins? Seems unlikely, but I'll have to look later. Or maybe the non-stock ThermalTake PIPE-101 heatsink that I have bolted down onto my AMD 64 3200+ has damaged the core... god I hope not. I haven't had any heat issues recently so I'm fairly certain nothing overheated.
Well I've got to head to work so I don't have any time to give the machine a completely detailed check up, I guess I'll do that later this evening. :( I'm just posting in the hopes that one of you will catch something I've missed or have an idea what exactly is causing this. Like I said, I suspect my motherboard but I'm really not looking forward to replacing it. All my comp specs are below in the sig, and thanks in advance for any help or suggestions you may provide.
This afternoon after getting up, I turned it on, and it won't even POST. The fans spin, the hard drive whirrs, the CD-ROMs spin... but no POST beeps and the monitor remains in standby mode.
Naturally, I was pretty pissed. After throwing a few things, I reset the CMOS, jiggled some wires, and raged a bit. No go. I raged a bit more, and reset the CMOS again. Lo and behold, it boots. As it makes its way to the Windows loading screen, I breathe a sigh of relief and head downstairs to grab a drink to celebrate. I return upstairs to see that it has reset itself, and is once again, not POSTing. I tried resetting the CMOS a few more times, removed and reinstalled a stick of RAM, checked to make sure that the mobo was getting power, that the video card was seated properly, all that great stuff. Nothing. So, my computer lies dead while I write this from a Pentium 200mhz with a 24000 dialup connection.
My guesses:
Sudden Motherboard death. Its been almost exactly a year since I bought the motherboard (A Shuttle AN50R) give or take a week, and I suspect that it just decided to die on me. Strange how it booted the one time but none of the others tho. I gave the mobo a cursory check, and I don't see any popped caps or anything visually wrong with it.
CPU problem... perhaps some Arctic silver 5 crept underneath the die and shorted some pins? Seems unlikely, but I'll have to look later. Or maybe the non-stock ThermalTake PIPE-101 heatsink that I have bolted down onto my AMD 64 3200+ has damaged the core... god I hope not. I haven't had any heat issues recently so I'm fairly certain nothing overheated.
Well I've got to head to work so I don't have any time to give the machine a completely detailed check up, I guess I'll do that later this evening. :( I'm just posting in the hopes that one of you will catch something I've missed or have an idea what exactly is causing this. Like I said, I suspect my motherboard but I'm really not looking forward to replacing it. All my comp specs are below in the sig, and thanks in advance for any help or suggestions you may provide.