Troubleshooting - Input appreciated

[5tharrow]

I'm having problems with the first rig in my sig. A little background: I transport this SFF system back and forth to my brother's place about twice per month, and I carry it in the original SUGO box, so it's very well protected, and I've always been overy carefull when I move it around. However, it's acting as if I damaged it somehow in transport.

I took it to my brother's over the Chistmas holiday, and when I hooked it up over there, I got a message upon first boot that said something to the effect "I ain't booting until you choose failsafe settings." I was like WTF? I've not overclocked this system at all; the only thing I changed in the BIOS when I first built this thing months and moths ago was turning off the on-board sound. But, I went into the BIOS and set everything to default settings. After that, it booted fine and I had no problems all weekend.

When I brought the PC back home and hooked it up, I got power to all of the fans, I see the DVD drive light flicker, but I get no signal to the monitor. It just sits there like a windy paperweight. Strangely enough, I cannot eject the DVD. There is no disc in the drive.

This is what I've done so far in an effort to troubleshoot this:

I checked all of the power connections first to be sure they weren't loose or anything. All was good.

I replaced the video card with an identical card from my other working machine. Nothing.

I removed the sound card. Nothing.

I replaced the two RAM sticks with one RAM stick from my other machine. Nothing.

I put in a stick of slower RAM from work. Nothing.

I completely disassembled the PC and reassembled it (did not pull and reset the CPU). Nothing.

The power supply is modular. I tried connecting the cables to different "ports" on the PS. Nothing. New modular power cables. Nothing.

I inspected the motherboard VERY closely and saw no damage anywhere. I also used compressed air to clean the thing (even though it was pretty clean to start with).

I set the BIOS jumper to reset the BIOS, set it back, then restarted. Nothing.

I pulled the CMOS battery for 15 minutes and discharged the mobo by pressing the power button a few times while it was out. I put the battery back in. Nothing.

All I can think to do at this point is to try and replace the power supply with another I know is working properly, and if that doesn't work, take the 3700+ from my working system and try it in the non-working system.

Does anyone have any good guesses as to what this points to? Does this sound like a dead processor, a bad power supply, or something else? Thanks.

 

[5tharrow]

I left the battery out overnight and tried booting the PC again at lunch today with no luck. I tried three different types of RAM.

I can't imagine how it would happen, but if a CPU is dead, what typically happens when you try to boot a PC? I get no signal to the monitor, but I seem to have power to the motherboard, all fans, hard drive, and DVD drive. I haven't had the opportunity to try a different power supply, but I will asap.

EDIT: I'm seeing from some other posts that it could possibly be the CPU. The symptoms are similar. I guess I could put a known working CPU in there and see what happens. I just don't want to kill another CPU if it's the motherboard at fault.

 

[kevdog]

1st guess= MoBo
2nd=CPU
do you use surge suppressors (all the time)?

 

[5tharrow]

Yes, I use UPS all the time. I have a couple of Belkin 1500's. I hope it is the motherboard (if something really is busted, that is) because I can get another one fairly cheap.

I think my next move will be to pull the CPU from the non-working machine and pop it in a working machine. If it works, I'll test the RAM in another machine. If THAT works, I'll have eliminated all but the power supply amd the motherboard.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to test all of this until early next week. So, Happy New Year, and I'll let you know what I find. Thanks.

 

[5tharrow]

Yes, it's been a long time, but I wanted to post the troubleshooting steps and results in case someone else has a similar problem.

As you can see from the above posts, I have a SFF PC that goes back and forth with me between my place and my brother's place about once a month. After transporting it (very carefully, as always) back to my place, it refused to boot.

I tried the following in order:

1. Checked all power supply connections
2. Removed and re-seated all cards
3. Reset the BIOS by removing the battery and setting a jumper on the motherboard to the reset position and back again
4. Tried one stick of RAM
5. Tried one stick of 3 other speeds and makes of RAM
6. Removed everything except for the CPU and RAM to see if I could get any kind of beep
7. Removed the motherboard from the case and tried to boot while it was sitting on top of a cardboard box
8. Tried a new power supply

None of the above worked. So, I decided to take the whole thing apart and test everything on another motherboard, one piece at a time. While I was removing the heatsink from the CPU, the CPU popped out of its socket. I hadn't lifted the CPU lever and wasn't expecting the thermal paste to have been so much like glue. Even so, I was gentle and didn't have to lift very hard at all.

So, I decided to clean-off the thermal paste from the CPU and heatsink with some 90% Isopropyl alchohol, re-apply some AC5 (dab and smash method), and see if it would boot. Guess what...it booted.

What I'm sure happened was the CPU became ever so slightly dislodged from the socket during transport. This was pretty much my first instinct, but of course I talked myself out of checking that until last.

Anyway, I hope this helps someone else down the road. Your solution may be in that list somewhere.