Anyone ever have a case go bad??

T

TheBluePill

2[H]4U
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Aug 17, 2005
Messages
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In 16 Years of computer repair I have run in to a whole bunch of stuff, but this one has me scratching my head..

A friend of mine brings me a Gateway 500S PC with a bad hard drive. I replace the drive, reload XP and its drivers, test everything out and give it back to him.

He calls me from home to tell me that it wont boot, just has a yellow power indicator.
So I have him bring it back to me.

I check over everything inside and it looks like all of the connections are solid and nothing shook loose durring the trip. So I start testing components. I have quite a few known good peices laying around and swap out the AGP Video card, Memory, CPU and Power supply, peice by peice all with the same results. the only Component I don't have is an Intel D845HV mobo, So I figure there is probably something wrong with the board.

I order a new one up and install it for him with his origional components and I get the same thing. So I take out everything and put in an alternate CPU, Vid & Mem with no other devices attached.. Same Yellow Light. I swap out the PS, Same yellow light. I swap out a 3rd PS, Same yellow light.

At this point the only compoent that is from the origional system is the case.... So I put in a PS that has a "test" switch.. SAME THING...

With both mobo's stripped down to the CPU/HS only I still only get a yellow light...

The 110 Power, KB and Mouse are all good, So What In the world am I missing???

Help...
 
Viper16 said:
Maybe some grounding issue with the case.
Click to expand...

I Took everything out of the case and get the same result.

I took the CPU and PS to another PC and It booted up fine... I am guessing I have received a 2nd Bum Motherboard.
 
Just to clear up something, you fixed it once (HDD), tested and worked. He tries it at his house and it doesn't work, right. Did he smell smoke? Do you smell smoke resin on anything?

Standoffs missing? Will it power up outside the case? Do all the swapped parts work in a seperate machine?

It sounds like something is shorted, but what?

 
Did you put the new motherboard in the case when you first got it?

It's possible the case shorted out the first mobo, then the case did the same thing to the new mobo when you put it in the case.
 
my friend's comp wont boot if the case is touching his table supports which are metal, i'm guessing grounding issues come up with that??? anyway moved it 2cm away from the metal stand and it booted fine... stupid grounding issues;)
 
this may sound stupid, but check the front bezel where the power and reset buttons are, I had an older Gateway E3400 unit at work where the reset button was stuck in and the same issue came up...... Gateway and I spent many days on the phone trying to figure that one out.....
 
This may be a worse-case scenario, but it would explain a few things.

The problem may be the original PSU went bad, taking out the mobo, also taking out the new mobo (I'm assuming you tried the new mobo on the old PSU). This would explain why the mobo isn't working on a new PSU.

At this point it's probably best to start testing what does work (take each part out of this build and put it into a working rig), and build up from there. Obviously I wouldn't test the PSU on other equipment.

Good luck.
 
Update? Can't just throw down a problem and not give an update.

 
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