Help! Computer just died!

[YorkieBen]

I was playing half life 2 today and my pc just died for no reason, no warning etc, temps were fine. I wasnt overclocking or anything

I tried switching it back on, the computer switched on but there was nothing on the screen. It isnt the monitor (have checked with another pc) but the thing is, although the pc switches on, there are no bios beeps, and after about 5 seconds of activity the hard drive activity led stops. Windows definitly isnt loading up (no 'welcome music' etc). All the fans are spinning and the graphics card card fan is still spinning and seems to be warm so I am basically not sure if it is dead or not?

Ive tried resetting the bios, unplugging everything except the cpu, memory etc and nothing

any ideas?

[mike_w]

Does it beep once or twice at boot up? That normally tells you it is booting up without problems.

If you take the memory out, does the motherboard start beeping?

Try taking out everything non essential e.g. optical drives, hard drives, PCI cards.

Can you swap in any components to test?

[Dav0s]

reset cmos

[YorkieBen]

no components to test at the moment, I may be able to get some cheap stuff tomorrow to test it.

reset cmos

done that

Does it beep once or twice at boot up

there are NO beeps at all unless I remove all the RAM or I remove the graphics card

however when the system is all together no beeps from the bios

Try taking out everything non essential e.g. optical drives, hard drives, PCI cards.

done that as well

system specs by the way:

Leadtek K7NCR18D Pro nforce 2 motherboard
Athlon 2800+ barton
768 mb ram
9800se aiw (softmodded to 8 pipes - could this over time have caused it?) with arctic cooler

[unreal]

I had that - my PSU just discreetly blown its underwear. See if you can grab another high powered PSU from another computer or something and plug a few vital things in roughly - as in just leave everything hanging, dont bother screwing the PSU in etc. And test.

If that doesn't work, theres probably a million other things

[Dingo]

What psu are you using? and do you have any monitoring software?

Have you added a stick of memory lately as your memory configuration is "unusual" (ie) not 512 or 1GB....particularly as you are running a dual channel mobo (ensure the memory is compatible, not had a lot of experience of that mobo so don't know the config for memory, are the memory sticks the same manufacturer and rating?.....run Memtest (if you can).

Worst case scenario is that your hdd is dead.

[killie99]

I'd bet the 5V rail on the power supply is toast. The 12V line will still be alive hence the reason for fans and HDDs spinning up but with no 5V (and hence probably no 3.3V as it's usually derived from the 5V) the motherboard is basically dead as the proverbial dodo. If you have a voltmeter measure between the red and black wires on the power supply which should measure 5V. Check your motherboard documentation for the other voltages you should be seeing on the motherboard power connector.

[YorkieBen]

its not my harddrive, i stuck it into my icybox and it was fine running on my brothers pc

the ram has been like that for a while. long story about the ram setup but its been like that for 8 months

im running an antec neopwer 480 psu, if it is broke I will not be happy only had it for 8 months or so. got it from ebuyer as well, dont fancy that rma with their rep.

[Taz]

Could be a toasted motherboard. Chipset fan died, causing mobo chipset to burn out? CPU died?

Have you checked for LED's on mobo (if it has them) to see if they indicate a failure?

Only other thing I can think of is what many of the others have said: toasted PSU.

[YorkieBen]

turns out it was a broken graphics card, so bye bye broken ati 9800se AIW

and hello generic agp graphics card cost £5 from the computer store so it will tide me over for a couple of days.

trouble is I cant find any drivers for it and frankly it makes windows look dreadful.

any suggestions re: a program to detect what card it is? powerstrip and rivatuner dont have a clue

[StoneNewt]

try looking at the actual card, if there's no fan on the graphics processor you're generally sorted

[YorkieBen]

powerstrip says it is a nvidia generic rev15 whatever that is. Clocks are 125/125 may some o/c ing action



uber power

[Dougal]

OMG thats Pyles 7800GT!

EDIT***

Whats the text on the big chip towards the back of the machine? not the mobo side.

[mattpc]

borrow some components and swap them out one by one.

[Trippledence]

borrow some components and swap them out one by one.

He's fixed it now..


The big chip looks like a bit of an old school chunky chip.