Computer won't post

[Chumly]

I built the computer that's in my sig almost a year ago. The PSU is a 750W Silverstone. OS is WinXP Pro.

The problem it always had was that if the computer froze up to the point where I had to hold down the power button for 4-5 seconds to shut it down and then boot it back up, it would never post when booting up again. I learned to use the restart button instead rather than holding down the power button for 4-5 seconds, because for some reason pressing the restart button would not cause any problems. Those times when I did accidentally hold down the power button for 4-5 seconds I managed to get the computer to post again by clearing the CMOS (by changing the jumper for roughly 30 seconds or so, not by taking the CMOS battery itself out).

Alright, so about two hours ago the computer locked up, and I wasn't able to close the offending program via double Ctrl+Alt+Del. So I held down the power button for 4-5 seconds because I forgot to use the restart button instead. I realized my mistake when the computer failed to post upon restarting it.

Okay, no problem. I'll just clear the CMOS.

Didn't work. Tried it several more times. Still didn't work. Took the CMOS battery out for a few minutes. No luck. Tried that one more time. Fuck!!

And I did unplug the power cord from the machine each of those times before clearing the CMOS.

The power light on the front of the case just blinks furiously, and only four of the five indicator lights on the motherboard are lit up. Like I said, every other time this happened clearing the CMOS always did the trick, but for some reason it's not helping this time.

I took the CMOS battery out and will try again after 24 hours, unless there's something else I could try.

Is there anything else I could try? What if it still doesn't work even after 24 hours?

 

[Chumly]

Bump

e: At around 2pm my time (mountain) today I decided to try reseating everything. Did that and placed the little CMOS battery back in, and also reset the jumper for the CMOS. No luck.

I'm working all day tomorrow, so I went ahead and took the CMOS battery back out and by the time I get back home from work tomorrow it will have been more than 24 hours.

 

[digital_exhaust]

Try breaking down, and start over. Pull everything out of the case, put the mobo on a piece of cardboard, install the cpu/hsf, one stick of ram, your video card, psu, keyboard, mouse and monitor and see if it will post. If it does, add one component at a time, installing your hdd last. Hopefully you will find the culprit during this process... If not, and everything runs fine outside of your case, run memtest on each stick individually for at least 4 hours.... If your memory passes, test your PSU voltages. If they're okay, try posting without any memory, and listen for beeps, then try with no video card, and listen for beeps... if the beep codes are incorrect, or there are none at all, you likely have a dead mobo.....

You can do this in reverse if you want, it's likely easier to pull your memory or video card with everything still in your case... either way, those steps should point you in the right direction...