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Did something stupid

5

5tharrow

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 9, 2005
Messages
193
My system was running fine, but I couldn't leave well enough alone. I changed my RAM timings (to slower timings actually), saved and rebooted. I haven't heard a beep since. I get no signal, no post, no nothing. It's the 3700+ system in my sig. The system does power on for about 10 - 15 seconds then powers itself off. I hear the HDD spinning and my DVD drive lights-up...all my fans work, including the ones connected to the motherboard.

I've since unplugged power and cleared CMOS (at least I think I have) by pushing the button next to the battery on the motherboard...nothing.

I pulled the battery for 15 minutes, put it back in...nothing.

I pulled the battery for 30 minutes, removed one stick of RAM, the video card (trying to use on-board video), and the sound card...nothing.

Any clue as to what I did? I feel kinda stupid here. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
 
Try plugging your monitor into the on-board VGA connector and removing you video card I've had this happen with my gigabyte matx board, then you will probably see like I did an warning about cmos has changed junk. Then turn off the on board video. Also try another power supply your could have lots a rail.
 
Yeah, I tried that, but it still shuts itself off after 10 seconds or so and never sends a signal to the monitor. Thanks for the suggestion though.
 
cpu fan header ? bad power supply ? have you try-ed disconnecting you hd or check your cables.
 
I've disconnected and re-connected just about every cable I can think of in this thing. I failed to mention that before I cleared the CMOS, it would boot and all the fans would spin and it would stay on indefinitely; it just wouldn't post or send a signal to the monitor. After I cleared the CMOS (I'm assuming that pulling the battery has done this), the thing only stays on for 10-15 seonds and powers itself off.

I'm afraid my next course of action will have to be a complete disassembly and a trial and error process in another system to make sure each individual part is working. I'm not doing that tonight. I'm going to leave it unplugged for the night and try it again tomorrow. I was just hoping someone would point-out something obvious that I'd missed so that I wouldn't have to do that.

Me and my curiosity. Bleh. Think I should leave the battery out or in overnight?
 
same thing for me today..i couldnt leave it alone. Couldnt get the monitor to produce anything for like an hour while trying all the things u did.

I had a spare pcie card so i put that in and cleared cmos again. the computer booted.

put the other card back in and i was back in business.

good luck
 
I can't help but think that maybe you accidentally changed another setting in your BIOS that could have started the problem. Or it is an odd coincidence that something else happened to break at the same time. W/ no signal ever to the monitor, you are going to have a hard time diagnosing the problem. Best bet is to put your 7800GT from your other rig in there to test the vid first (lucky that you have another). As far as resetting the CMOS, you must either short jumpers or use whatever that button thing is on your mobo. Unstead of pulling the battery, unplug the rig from the wall, then reset your CMOS.
 
I had similar thing happen yesterday.... PC running fine for 2 months and then i go to change my OC and beep... beep... off

I unplugged everything, cleared cmos everything... could not get it to start...

then I changed the CPU and bang it started.... so i thought my CPU was dead, put it back in to be sure and then it worked...

if you dont have another cpu then you are out of luck, but I have noticed that even with the battery out and my PSU unplugged my CMOS will not reset.... I have heard of a 12hr reset on DFIs forums and that you need to leave the battery out for like 8-12hrs to really reset cmos...

dont know if it is true but I know after i reset and removed battery my settings were still there....

hopefully this helps man...
 
Thanks for the suggestions. I have to do girlfriend stuff all this weekend, so unless I can convince her that she needs to learn how to troubleshoot a PC, this is going to sit for a few days.

I have some spare parts that I can swap-out one by one to see if I can narrow down the problem...maybe if I buy her something she'll let me...nah, just let it sit. No need to spend more money. I may need it for a new motherboard. :)
 
I have seen unplugging them, and removing the CMOS battery and chip overnight do wonders for a no-POST board. I would suggest unplugging everything and pulling the cards too. Then at least you have a much narrowed set of variables to deal with.
 
And when you take out the CMOS battery, unplug the computer from every cable in the back, esp the power cable. And then hit the power button a couple times to make sure that there is not residual power.
 
a system for me, shutting down after 10 seconds was a bad PSU, not enough power into the system.
 
I think u have received the best suggestions possible for this problem. I feel very confident you don't have a dead board...I guess because of what just happened to me. Just do what's been suggested and you may save yourself some dough.

Besides, you probably needed to clean out your case anyway :)
 
Last time I was trying to get my memory working stable I had this happen.

Turned out to be a dead Motherboard (just happened to die when I was playing with settings.)

Other than that, the last 2 times I time I have sceen the fans spinnig up, beep, then everything shuts down, it was a bad PSU.
 
I only had time to try one thing this morning; now I'm out the door. I replaced the two sticks of RAM I had in there with one stick of DDR-266 that I borrowed from work. I turned on the PC and I saw stuff! I got a "Bad Checksum...NVRAM" message, and was prompted to hit F1 ro go into setup, or F2 to load failsafe defaults. I hit F2 and got into Windows, but when Windows detected the video card and started loading the drivers, the machine rebooted itself. This time, I went into the BIOS and disabled the on-board video, sound, and anything else I didn't need. When I rebooted into Windows, everything seemed to work fine.

Thinking everything was fixed, I took out the borrowed RAM stick, put my "good" RAM and sound sound card back in and powered the system back up. Well, I get no video again. The system doesn't power itself off, but the monitor gets no signal.

When I get back tonight or tomorrow morning, I'm going to put the test RAM back in and see if I can get this thing working again. I'll take one of the Corsair sticks and try it in my other machine to see if it works in there.

Thanks again for all of the suggestions. I'll get this working sooner or later.
 
I put the test RAM back in and it booted fine. I went into the BIOS and set the RAM timings manually to 2-3-3-6 T1 (what they were before I changed them and caused this mess), then I put my Corsair RAM back in. Now, it boots just fine with the original RAM. I'm in the process of reinstalling Windows right now. I hadn't even activated it yet, and I didn't have the partitions setup the way I wanted them anyway.

So, thanks for all of the help. I've learned my lesson. :)
 
So, have you cleared the CMOS manually yet? If it had bad settings it never hurts to clear the saved configs.
 
As a last result, if nothing else works, you can try hotflashing the bios. I've personally save a few boards that way in the past.
 
It's working fine now. I was never really able to clear the CMOS. Hitting the CMOS reset button (as the manual says to do) didn't do it, and pulling the battery for 20 minutes didn't do it either. I was going to pull the battery overnight, as some suggested, but temporarily switching to one stick of slower RAM got me to the point where I could actually see something on the screen and set the BIOS to failsafe defaults. It actually didn't completely work with my "good" RAM until I manually set the timings. I don't know why it wouldn't boot with the timings set to auto.
 
Glad to hear you got it working. Hopefully this thread will save someone else some trouble in the future. :)
 
That checksum message you got I believe was an indication that you HAD manages to clear your CMOS.
 
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