My P4 won't post, people!

[Dani]

Hey there guys. Yesterday during a really bad storm, I was at work with my mom. We got a phone call from the alarm company for my house saying that the shocks had gone off and the police were called. Thinking that lightning struck the house, I went home to reset the alarm. When I got home, I noticed all of the clocks throughout the house had reset, indicating a temporary blackout. In addition, I always keep my PC and my mac on 24/7. When I got home, my mac was off. My PC had restarted herself, as she normally does after a power outage.

Finding no other problems, I worked on my PC all nite long. Everything worked fine. Today, upon waking up, I went over to the computer. I moved the mouse around to awake the monitor, and nothing! The fans spin up, the hdd light goes on, and NOTHING. No beeps, nothing out of the monitor, no POST, nothing.

I opened up the machine and made sure the CPU was secure on the motherboard and I tried removing the RAM. No difference.

I looked in my motherboard's manual to see if there was something about resetting the BIOS but I couldn't find anything. I don't even know if that would help because the machine doesn't even beep or POST.

I have an Asus P4PE motherboard with a 533 Mhz system bus P4 3.06 ghz with HT technology. I recently upgraded the RAM in the machine about a month or two ago, so I doubt it would have gone bad so quickly.

A problem with my machine that I am aware of is that there isn't very much (or as much as there should be) sticky contact stuff between my CPU and heatsink. However, the heatsink fan does spin up.

[Tekmaven]

Find the CMOS reset jumper, and reset your CMOS. Take EVERYTHING out that doesn't need to be in it, and leave one stick of RAM. Try it then..

[Dani]

To quote my above post:

I looked in my motherboard's manual to see if there was something about resetting the BIOS but I couldn't find anything. I don't even know if that would help because the machine doesn't even beep or POST.

Also to quote my above post,

I opened up the machine and made sure the CPU was secure on the motherboard and I tried removing the RAM. No difference.

[Tekmaven]

Well, roflmao, this is your board, and you didnt use [ quote ]! :-P

Every motherboard had a cmos reset jumer; so look harder. Secondly, you didnt say you took everything out; you said you took the ram out. I'm suggesting leaving a stick of ram in, and taking everything else out!

[Dani]

Ahh, sorry, misunderstood. I also tried unplugging the hard drives and removing the video card. That's all that is in the machine! I have the manual in front of me, and I've been searching. It keeps telling me "jumper-free motherboard" :-/

[Dani]

Sorry for double posting, but I figured out the problem! Upon closer investigation, I noticed that all of the fans spin up, except for my video card fan. It seems like a bad video card to me. I'm going to just pop a different card into the machine and make sure - gasp! - it's not the AGP slot or some other issue.

[Tekmaven]

FYI, I looked at your manual:

3. Clear RTC RAM (CLRTC1)
This jumper allows you to clear the Real Time Clock (RTC) RAM in CMOS. You can clear the CMOS memory of date, time, and system setup parameters by erasing the CMOS RTC RAM data. The RAM data in CMOS, that include system setup information such as system passwords, is powered by the onboard button cell battery.
To erase the RTC RAM:
1. Turn OFF the computer and unplug the power cord.
2. Move the jumper cap from pins 1-2 (default) to pins 2-3. Keep the cap on pins 2-3 for about 5~10 seconds, then move the cap back to pins 1-2.
3. Plug the power cord and turn ON the computer.
4. Hold down the <Del> key during the boot process and enter BIOS setup to re-enter data.

NOTE: Except when clearing the RTC RAM, never remove the cap on CLRTC1 jumper default position. Removing the cap will cause system boot failure!

[Catweazle]

And anyway, all you needed to do to reset CMOS was to pull the blasted battery out, and replace it a few minutes later!

BUT::

Always disconnect the power cord from the system, AND the ATX connector from the motherboard before resetting CMOS, whether you do it by shorting the jumper or by the good old backyarder's battery trick. There's less chance of problems that way.

Good luck with that mobo, by the way Dani. Power flicks are nasty little things!

[Dani]

Well, it turns out it was the video card. It turns out that it just died on its own, I think the power thing was just coincidence (as the AGP slot and rest of the motherboard is fine.) I went to CompUSA today and bought a Geforce FX card - swapped 'em out, and everything is all good to go!

[DMR]

I think the power thing was just coincidence

Probably not a coincidence. The components on the vid card had probably already been weakened by heat due to the fan's failure; the voltage irregularities caused by the power outage were enough to finally kill something on the card.

Glad it was only a minor death though. :)

[Dani]

Yes, I was oh so so happy that the AGP slot wasn't dead on the motherboard. Besides, I got a sweet Geforce FX 5900 SE out of the deal :)

[Killer_Typo]

Yes, I was oh so so happy that the AGP slot wasn't dead on the motherboard. Besides, I got a sweet Geforce FX 5900 SE out of the deal :)

very nice card. i have the
PNY Verto 5600 256Mb AGP

very nice card, though i would kill for a 5900 cuz their better :).

[Catweazle]

Marking this as 'Solved', Dani :D

(And, off-topic as it is, I'm sitting back waiting for my lovely FX5900XT to arrive, anticipating some overclocking fun!

It's a proven performer I obtained from an overclocker acquaintance who's moved to a Radeon X800Pro, and the card runs quite happily at about 500MHz core clockspeed. It'll do quite well, I reckon, in accompaniment with the Athlon XP system I have which chugs along no worries at XP3400+ speeds!)