b0rked PC :(

[WPKenny]

Last night my pc was powering up as soon as it powered down. Even holding the power button in would not stop it. As soon as it switched off it powered back up again. I eventually had to switch the PSU off at the back.

This morning I go to turn it on but it seems to be stuck in a boot loop. It powers up for a few seconds, fans spin etc but without beeping or switching on the monitor on it simply resets and starts all over again.

I've tried resetting the BIOS as the first obvious option but that didn't work. I've wiggled all the cables to see if that was the issue and that didn't solve it.

I'm off out for a few hours now so haven't got time to take it apart just yet but if anyone's got any suggestions on what might be wrong and how I could fix it I'd be grateful.

It's a Tagan 480w PSU with an ASUS A7N8X Deluxe motherboard. 1gig of ram, AMD 3000+ XP CPU and a BFG 7800gs AGP graphics card if it helps.

Any help is very much appreciated since I can't afford to replace anything right now.

 

[Clown]

What job were you applying for again?

 

[yaruar]

Do all the fans spin up, or just the PSU fan?

DO the lights on the monitor light up?

I'd say offhand it's of a number of things. Probably one of the rails on the PSU is borked. Or the mobo/cpu/bios is caput. No error beeps or keyboard lights means it's probably not hitting the bios.

Also the previous symptoms of it not shutting down points to a problem with the power control, either the switch, the motherboard controlling the circuit or the psu itself...

Take note though, don't mess around with the stitch, i did once after having similar rebooting problems and got confused when i rewired it as it wasn't labelled and blew my psu up by shorting the whole thing... it smoked and went *POOOOOOOOOP* and everything..

 

[TdC]

got a spare PSU you could hook up and test the mobo on?

 

[WPKenny]

Posting from my sis' houseright now. Just before I left the house I noticed the PSU fan wasn't spinningso I gave it a nudge and it was quite firmly stuck but it budged with a little nudge. So I think perhaps the fan hadn't been working for a little while and something inside the PSU or the case overheated. Will have to poke about more when I get home.

No spare PSU tho. Well at least nothing over about 150w .

 

[Deadnala]

I used to have the same problem on a older pc. I replaced the cmos battery wich fixed the problem. (max 5 €)

 

[Yaka]

ifbatteries replacment dont werk then use the old tursted method of ripping it apart and putting it back together

 

[WPKenny]

Getting closer to the problem. I found an old 250w psu in a spare box I had in a cupboard. I've disco'd everything except the CPU (obv) and the 2xSATA drives and I've even put in an old Ti4200 to reduce power consumption but it gets as far as the memory check and once complete, hangs. If I try to go into the BIOS it also hangs.

 

[Yaka]

b0rked bios then?

 

[Deadnala]

b0rked bios then?

Then again, the bios rely on the cmos battery.
If the bios chrashed, i think you can just put a bios of a old mommyboard in your mb and flash it. you should be able to find more info on this topic at google.

 

[WPKenny]

I'm starting to think it could well be the BIOS/mobo since I put the 480w psu into the old pc I nicked the 250w from and it boots fine.

 

[WPKenny]

This is taking far too long. heh. I'm emailing back and forth with Asus at the moment trying to find out if they'll send me a replacement BIOS chip to see if it's that problem, otherwise I'm looking at replacing the motherboard.

I'm trying to get an almost exact match for the motherboard but have seen a cheap and cheerful Socket A at microdirect.co.uk which should do the job.

I've got a question about this tho. I only ever played with the RAID configuration when I first installed the motherboard nearly two years ago so it's all a bit hazy.

The two SATA drives I have in at the moment are striped (RAID 0). How do I go about setting the replacement motherboard up? Do I have the drives plugged in at the time of booting? Do I configure the RAID before I plug them in? Do I need to configure anything at all or will it justdetect the configuration automatically?

I'm just worried about doing the wrong thing and wiping the MBR or something!

 

[Clown]

Am I off the hook now?

 

[WPKenny]

Am I off the hook now?

Not yet

I'm waiting for ASUS to get back to me and let me know if they can sort my BIOS out. Otherwise I'm still on the lookout for a new mobo and you're still my first choice. If you really can't be arsed ripping the PC apart to send me your old motherboard let me know and I'll stop nagging you.