No post, no boot, no fan whr, no Nothing!

D

dwayne001

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 9, 2003
Messages
468
So i have this emachines T2542 on my hands-- 2.53 celeron D machine with 256meg of 333 ddr ram.

Pressing the button on the front won't start it. At all. I mean nothing happens. No fans begin, no monitor turns on-- nothing at all occurs. SO I opened it up and took a look inside to check that everything was plugged in and so on. It was

Then I changed the power supply. Still nothing.

Then I took a look at the button mechanism-- it's fine, makes contact and everything.

Then, I felt a REALLY HOT capacitor on the board and turned the thing 'off'' as in disconnected the power supply.

Then I got a NEW micro ATX board, copied the contents off of the hard drive, and installed the new board with the old chip and Ram, preparing to make the machine again with all original parts save the board. When clicking the button, NOTHING happened.

I flipped the jumper of the PW SW around on the pins. Still nothing.

I switched the power supply again-- to one that I know works. Nothing happened.

The only thing I do get is this burny smell coming from somewhere inside the machine. I know-- not good. But there are no hot capacitors or heat sinks.
The green mobo light of the new board correctly turns on whenever the PSU is plugged in-- no matter which PSU i'm using.

What's the poblem? Any suggestions? The chip seemed very much in tact when I inspected it, but nothing's going on when the power sw is activated.

Any suggestions? Please?

Then I disconnected
 
Haha.

Did you install the motherboard without any washers? There is probably some electrical discharge going on there.

-J.
 
It does sound like an electrical short somewhere... do teh fans start turning momentarily and then stop? It may happen once, then the machine refuses to do it again for some time.

I would disconnect everything except the motherboard form teh power supply, then try turning it on and see if you get any response. If so, then you have a bad peripheral device causing an overcurrent. Fans are good for doing that.

If not, then likely your motherboard is damaged or, as GeForceX so eloquently put it, the motherboard is shorted to chassis somewhere.
 
I heartily agree that the problem is an electrical short-- but where? Every single contact to the board by the case on theboard's back is a screw hole where a screw is touching both the board and the case.

Thinking along hte lines of this electrical problem, I moved entire innards of the machine OUT of the E machines retail case an into a completely working, functional Thermaltake Xaser II full ATX case. (A considerable effort since there already existed a computer within that Xaser)

Plugged it in, still got nothing. Reversed the PW SW jumper, still got nothing.

So in addition to removing the only PCI card, and drives, i also removed the single stick of DDR333.

Still nothing.

This is a new board, with components I've tested in other machines, individually and still I'm getting a very simillar result as when all the components were attached to the original board.

Strains me past the compass of my wits.

I'm gonna pull the chip and heat sink off and try to get the new board up and full of errors with absolutely nothing attached. If that last resort doesn't work, I'm gonna consider myself cursed unless one of yous has yet another suggestion.
 
Take it out of the case and put it on a non conduting surface.
The box the mobo came in is what I always use.

Put the CPU in and attach the heat sink.
Check the heatsink fan is in the correct header.
Plug the power supply in and power it on.
Now just touch the two power switch headers with a small screwdriver to start it.
Does the heat sink fan start up and for how long.

If not then something is well dead.

If it works then switch it off and unplug it to stop the standby voltages.
Add vid card and one stick of memory.
Power it back on and do you get the "missing keyboard, press F1" message.

Thats how I start to trouble shot a problem build.

Luck.......... :D


Luck........... :D
 
Two words-- No Worky.

I tried what Tirgibiten said and still got nothing. I also changed power supplies and got nothing.

Then I removed the chip and got nothing-- which really surprised me since i was under the impression that boards would complain about anything, regardless of what they were missing.

Then I changed to the original emachines board and tried the process all over again.

No worky.

OK, so I don't expect I'll be able to fix it. What I do want to know is why both boards are not working. Is the problem the Intel Celeron D? Could that be creating the bad charge mojo which has somehow, someway affected the two boards in such a way that they are now beyond hope?


Any and all suggestions or conjecture would be helpful.

Thanks.
 
this doesn't sound good... are you positive that the CPU isn't defective...? I did read every post.. but don't remember if you tried booting with minimum hardware (no HD, optical drives etc.). I remember working on a computer with a defective HD that would short the PSU and it wouldn't start at all..
 
To GeForceX and TheMostWantedPolishTwin, I have tried to boot the thing with nothing-- not even the CPU-- to no avail.

What bothers me about the DOA scenario is that the emachines computer was working and suddenly the 'short' problem began to happen. Since the problem is identical on both the original Emachines board and the New Intel board, I really haev a hard time chalking the intel board's problems up to DOA. Could the chip have sorted out the entire system? Irrepairably?
 
If you carelessly took out parts without any anti-static wrist or safety precautions, it could happen.

-J.
 
Anti-static wrist straps were employed during the work. Anything else that could have killed it?

My issue with the beginnings of hte problem was that the case was factory sealed and working...and then, it stopped. It wouldnt turn on. Only then did the process described above commence, with obvious thoughts toward electric shorts and PSU problems.
 
OMG, just realized. Those parts are propriety, right? There are security measures that companies do that prevent you from pulling / replacing parts and using it in another case. They won't work without the original parts that it was built with.

There's not much you can do really. As far as right now, I wouldn't know if it's dead or not. I'm not sure but it may be possible it will work upon putting it back together in the eMachines box.

-J.
 
interesting hypothesis. do you think that protection extends to the chip? It must if it's not working either. that means that the intel board won't whhhr up without a chip though. How does that sound to you? Or is it that the intel board really IS DOA?
 
Yes, it extends to the motherboard. The BIOS and perhaps a chip somewhere on the motherboard can detect changes and in cause will lock the whole thing up.

Try putting the whole thing back in the eMachines. If it actually works, then it verifies my "hypothesis". It's not really a hypothesis, it's what they really do. Especially Gateway. I had a Gateway become non-working after I pulled out the parts to put in another case. I tried pushing the power button over and over and there was absolutely nothing that could turn it on.

Of course, it was so old (200 mhz, etc) that I never bothered putting it back.

DOA = I doubt it. It doesn't make sense for it to die after pulling it out - it's not like a bumblebee that gets its stinger ripped out after attacking and dies. :)

-J.
 
Okay, I'm thinking that this isn't an issue with non-proprietary components interfering with operation.

If you have a voltmeter handy, I'd check and see if there are any voltage outputs at all from the PSU. Leave teh PSU disconnected from the wall for a good ten minutes, then plug it in (turn on the power switch in back, if there is one) and check the voltage levels on all the wires going into the motherboard. The black wires are all connected to the negative in the PSU, so you can put the negative lead of the multimeter on that, moving the positive lead to each successive wire.

There may be a small voltage on a green wire, this is the wire that turns the PSU on when a ground is applied to it. Blue is -12vdc and white -5vdc, so you will have to reverse your meter leads when reading those two wires with an analog meter.

Try powering the machine up and check for voltages again. Orange should be 3.3vdc, Yellow is 12vdc, Red, 5vdc. All values should read within 5%, though ten percent is adequate for the two negative voltages.

Don't try checking the PSU without it being plugged into something-- most ATX PSUs require a minimum amount of load before powering up.
 
OK, I have to go out and get a volt meter. But i've tested my zalman psu on another machine and it works fine. are you suggesting that on this board and this board alone that PSU is rendered inneffective? If that's not a non-proprietary parts thing, what is it?
 
I'm not sure what you're asking about. Is the Zalman PSU part of the original machine? If not, then it wouldn't work. If you used the original PSU, it probably would. It is all a probability as I had little experience with this.

-J.
 
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