tech Question for the DAW pro's

[LemonTree]

PIV 3.0Ghz
Asus P4C 800-E Deluxe
2 GHz Kingmax DDR400
Maxtor 120Gig SATA system disk
Maxtor 80Gig SATA recording disk
Matrox Dual head 32Meg AGP video card


ew weeks ago I started gettind errors on bootup. Bios telling me hard drives couldn't be found, then it was looking for raid controllers when I don't have a raid system.

Finaly died a death last week. I have a green for go light on te mobo so an thinking all is ok there, swapped out all 4 memory sticks, cleared the cmos, replaced the mobo battery, bypassed the front power on switch on the comp and it still wont boot.

I'm guessing either a bad bios chip, but would I get a green mobo light if this was the case? Or my processor has died which I find hard to believe only being 2 years old and never going over 50% load on productions

words from the wise please, many thanks

Alex

 

[altitude909]

Start with the power supply, that is easiest the most failure prone part of a comp. If it were a major component like the memory, cpu, or mainboard component you should get a beep code.

 

[LemonTree]

would I still get the green mobo check LED if the power supply was shot?

The PSU is less than 8 months old, Antec...cost me an arm and a leg.

 

[jpmorris]

I guy I know had a machine that slowly decayed over the last 6 months or so. At first it locked up if he played games, then gradually it became more and more frequent even with normal usage. Reinstalling the OS entirely, even replacing the HDD for the boot drive did not help and the memory tested OK. In that case it was the PSU slowly dying, so I wouldn't count it out even if the machine has power.

 

[TimOBrien]

Few weeks ago I started gettind errors on bootup. Bios telling me hard drives couldn't be found, then it was looking for raid controllers when I don't have a raid system.

Alex

Did you try to replace the CMOS BATTERY???

$2 fix that should always be the first thing to try.
If your CMOS setting keep getting lost from the battery going bad (and I see a LOT of bad ones these days, the Chinese factories are really putting out bad ones), your system won't know how to boot.....

 

[superspit]

have you ever over-clocked your system...with this current windows hard drive...?
You may find it's the actual software (windows) that has become corrupt.
Have you got another drive with windows on it...just to see if it does but up with that?

Anyways...just thought I'd throw that in the hat.

 

[Mindset]

You might need to check the mobo itself. If you have done what you already troubleshooted, than the main candidates for failure now would be the mobo or cpu.

 

[timthetortoise]

Did you try to replace the CMOS BATTERY???

$2 fix that should always be the first thing to try.
If your CMOS setting keep getting lost from the battery going bad (and I see a LOT of bad ones these days, the Chinese factories are really putting out bad ones), your system won't know how to boot.....

Uh, the CMOS battery is for retaining settings, not the BIOS itself. That is written in an EEPROM, which is not volatile.

 

[LemonTree]

Turned out to be the MOBO, dunno if it was just the Bios chip, I'm gonna buy a replacement as they're so cheap so if it was that I have a second system for backup.

Thanks for all the suggestions

Alex