Dead PC?

[aatwo]

Hello!

I have been having problems with my computer which has escalated into a full system faliure


For the past year(ish) my computer has been having problems. Occasionally I would turn the PC off before going to sleep or whatever, only to find it refusing to power up when I next tried to turn it on. It would literally not power up at all. Then all of a sudden it would work, as if nothing had ever happened.

Obviously this was frustrating... so I began to turn my computer off more infrequently for fear of it refusing to turn back on.

Sometimes however it would have absolutely no problems starting back up.

Crazy right?

Well anyways, I turned it off the other night before going to bed and then the following morning it refused to turn on, and this time it has given up for good (apparently).

I have tried it repeatedly for the last few days but frankly I have given up and have decided to fix this problem now!

So NOW the computer, when connected to the power supply, will display the green light on the motherboard to indicate that the power supply is connected, but pressing the on button will do nothing!


I HAVE TRIED using a spare power supply that I had lying around (never used due to it being only 350 watts) but it presented the exact same problem. I have also tried removing my graphics card and reducing the ram down to just one stick. I even bought a power button replacement for 99p but this failed to work aswell.

I am begining to think, looking around on the internet, that this could be a motherboard problem. Is this right?


This is the mobo I have:
ASUS P5B Socket 775 Core 2 ready P965 chipset onboard audio ATX Motherboard

power supply:
Antec TruePower II 480W PSU

Replacement power supply that I tried:
the psu that came with -Cute ATX Gaming Case with 350W PSU"

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 (1.86ghz) Socket 775 Fsb1066 2mb Cache Retail Boxed Processor

 

[~Candy~]

Either the motherboard or the power switch.

Try shorting the power pins instead of using the power switch to see if it will power on.

 

[aatwo]

I already tried a spare power switch.


But I just had a thought as to what else the problem could be.

Could it be that my graphics card is fried? I don't believe my mobo has any form of onboard graphics card, and so if my current graphics card was not coonnected properly or was broken would the computer display the behavious that I have described above?

 

[~Candy~]

I'd still try shorting the pins with a metal object. I usually use a ballpoint pen.

 

[~Candy~]

You edited after I posted my reply.

Try pulling the video card out to see if you get any beeps.

 

[aatwo]

I tried shorting the pins but nothing happened. I also tried removing the card but still; nothing happened.

I have just placed the old power supply back into the computer to see if I would land in any kind of luck and now the power supply light on the mother board is NOT on any more. Does this mean it could be the power supply? Is there any way to be sure (besides testing it inside another system) that the power supply is or is not faulty?

 

[~Candy~]

Usually the light NOT being on is a bad sign.

Do you have the mobo manual to see what the light on or off means? Does it have a red option too?

 

[aatwo]

I dont believe there is a red option. I do have the manual however I have suffering from man flu today and am regretably feeling too run down to continue with all this troubleshooting business. I will be back tomorrow to continue with the investigation but before I go I just wanted to thank you for all you help so far!

Perhaps I will see you tomorrow!

 

[~Candy~]

You're welcome. I'll be around in the morning for a bit, then out for the remainder of the day, but, I'll be notified of all of your follow up postings.

Hope you feel better tomorrow. Hopefully there's a woman around that knows how to care for sick children........errr, um, I mean, sick men

 

[Ocelot02]

Sounds like a motherboard problem. It might be fried.

 

[aatwo]

I am back

May I ask what your recommendations would be?

Purchase a new motherboard AND power supply?
Or I could even pop my computer into PC world or somewhere like that to see if they can figure it out (although 512 RAM went missing from a computer I had in there once).

 

[~Candy~]

A place like that should be able to test the motherboard, I would think.

I've seen ram disappear when folks take things in for repair as well. I usually recommend printing out a Belarc advisor report that shows what's in it, but, obviously, in your case, you can't run it if the machine won't start.

 

[Ocelot02]

you can take a picture for proof of what you have in there.

 

[aatwo]

Yeh. Although I think I have an idea about what I could do!

I know theres a shop near by that sells pretty cheap multimeters so I was going to pick one of those up and test out my power supply as instructed by this website:

http://www.ochardware.com/articles/psuvolt/psuvolt2.html

Then if I find the power supply to be working fine I will be pretty sure that it is the mobo that needs replacing. I can't really afford to just guess only to later find out that I made the wrong choice! since a decent power supply and a decent motherboard are both quite expensive!

 

[Ocelot02]

yeah every pc builder should have a psu power tester of some sort.