Ok, will try that now thanks.
Ok, will try that now thanks.
I could take on 28 five year old kids in a fight.
I could name 55 countries in 5 minutes.
My body makes a 58% effective human shield.
My dead body is worth £5750.
I have a 41% chance of surviving a zombie apocalypse.
Im 40% geek.
No such luck. Thanks anyhow though.
I'll check to see if theres a short in the mobo tomorrow using the cardboard.
Thanks for your help guys.
I could take on 28 five year old kids in a fight.
I could name 55 countries in 5 minutes.
My body makes a 58% effective human shield.
My dead body is worth £5750.
I have a 41% chance of surviving a zombie apocalypse.
Im 40% geek.
I wasn't suggesting he does this with the PSU plugged in! By the time he has dismantled the PC, and removed the PSU, the caps would have discharged themselves, either through the ccts themselves, or through the bleed resistors that should be connected across them for that purpose!
(The caps on the mains side of the inverter will charge up to about 300 volts, which would bring tears to your eyes, although unlikely to be fatal as they would discharge across a hand - they float wrt earth - and anyway they will discharge quite quickly.
The caps on the output side will charge to the rail voltage, 5V or 12V and is not in itself dangerous, although if you shorted them while they were charged, you would get quite a spark. - depending on the value of the capacitor - remembering that charge (in coulombs) =CV where C is in Farads, and the stored engery (in joules) = CV^2 - again C is in Farads) so a 1000 microfarad capacity charged to 300 volts stores about 90 joules - and being DC is less harmful than the AC equivalent - still give you a belt though!!)
But perhaps I should have added a caveat that you do need to be very careful removing the covers from a PSU - it isn't something to be done lightly, and apart from anything else, may void the warranty. And if you do work on a PSU that has been live in the last hour or so, it is a wise precaution to connect a low value resistor (say 1Kohm) across the main smoothing/ripple capacitors for a few seconds to ensure they are safely discharged.
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Back on topic - starting up the mobo with the CMOS battery disconnected would be unlikely to 'fry' the board. The battery is only there to supply power to maintain the CMOS memory while main power is not available to the board, ie when it isn't connected to mains (doesn't have to be powered up - remember that LED that glows?) Removing the jumper disconnects the battery, I don't know if placing it on the other two pins actually does anything (such as shorting the CMOS power input to earth, but even if it does, it is unlikely to cause harm
It is also unlikely to damage the BIOS, which is electical eraseable programmable ROM (EEPROM) which as the title suggests, is erased by applying a voltage to a programming pin, and this is done under the control of utility software - otherwise the bios holds its contents undisturbed.
(Note that I have used the word unlikely - voltage spikes etc can do funny things to electronics, but there are more probable causes for the problem which need to be eliminated before going down the road of despair!)
More likely is that the OP has disturbed a connection to the mobo somewhere while tinkering inside and that is the cause of the problem.
The solution, as has been pointed out, is to stop panicking, inspect the inside of the machine for loose wires etc ,and if necessary to a rebuild, carefully and methodically. It is probably easier to do that outside the case, as that enables a visual check to be made more easily, and once working, gives confidence that all is OK. Then it can be carefully and methodically built back into the case.
Thorsen has described the precise steps very concisely in an earlier post.
Last edited by peterb; 18-04-2008 at 05:51 PM.
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Sorry for panicking, but when you've just spent £800 of you're own money, its scary .
Tomorrow I will check every connection, and if that fails, I will do an external rebuild. Thanks
I could take on 28 five year old kids in a fight.
I could name 55 countries in 5 minutes.
My body makes a 58% effective human shield.
My dead body is worth £5750.
I have a 41% chance of surviving a zombie apocalypse.
Im 40% geek.
Good luck!
(Incidentally - if you don't mind me adding a bit more advice - when anything unusual or unexpected happens to a computer - the steps "stop, think, plan, review the plan, think, review the plan - act" is a good one - often more harm is done by hasty inappropriate action in an unfamiliar situation when with a bit of forethought, the situation could have been contained and resolved. It goes for many real life situations too! )
Last edited by peterb; 18-04-2008 at 06:21 PM.
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Aye I know. But no-one works well in "headless chicken" mode. It's easy to either overlook the obvious (like a loose wire) or actually damage something.
The approach to any problem is best undertaken in a methodical and steady manner and we already had two examples of mistakes (dropped jumper and switching on with jumper in wrong place), that could have been avoided. While I agree with perterb that these should not cause any damage, I was worried that mistake 3 might actually change that.
If you are not going to touch the PC until tomorrow I'd suggest leaving the CMOS battery out overnight. I've always found that it clears pretty quickly, but I've seen some people saying that they had to leave it for hours after bad OCs. Can't do any harm.
There would seem to be only two possibilities here. Either you have some temporary issue, and you need do a "rebuild" from minimal components, or somehow something vital has got hosed. While none of what you describe should have damaged any of the key components (PSU, mobo, CPU) it's possible that you, or your friend, did something else without realising it.
I don't have your mobo, but looking at pictures it doesn't appear to have a light like the Pro, so you can't see if it's getting power. When you say not booting, is it completely dead? Not a hint of a fan whirr?
Also looking at pictures the CMOS jumper appears to be of the rubberized type with a little "handle" on top. I'm surprised you had to use tweezers, that it fell off, and that it rattled around, if it is as in the pictures.
I had similar issues with my Dark raider mobo and 4x1Gb sticks of ram. Turned out the motherboards default for DDR2 is 1.8V so the darn 2.1V specc'd ram modules stop the pc even getting to BIOS. I ended up doing the following:
remove all the ram except for one stick which you put in slot4
try get to the bios
once you get to the bios set the DDR2 voltage to whatever yours is specc'd at
Wasted hours (and a little blood) on this before finding the solution. If the above doesn't work and you have some other ram that'll boot the board at 1.8V try that (though that may of course damage the working ram if it's not able to cope at 2.1V) I was getting into the bios once in 20-30 boots before upping the voltage. Been absolutely fine since! They should stick a warning on the ram and/or motherboards
Good luck (I would steer clear of opening the psu unless you know what you are doing and know the risky bits - especially if all it is is a little BIOS tweak that's needed!)
I know I've made a big mistake really. Shouldn't have touched the CMOS. I acted without thinking - it worked with 2GB of RAM and I was putting in the exact same make of RAM into it. I should have thoroughly tested each stick to make sure I wasn't doing something stupid when I put it in. Maybe I just got very unlucky and got another 2 sticks of bad RAM (unlikely, but possible). Meh, mistakes are made to be learned from ... right ?
When I press the power button there is absolutely nothing. The fans don't even move an inch, not a light comes on, absolutely no sounds are made, nothing. Basically, nothing visible or audible changes when I press the power button.
As for the jumper, I have pretty big hands, and it's inbetween a rather large graphics card and a PSU. I couldnt fit my hands in to get it. The only way to do it was to use tweasers (careful not to touch anything with them) and pull it out. Then it slipped right out the tweasers and I haven't seen it since.
I wouldn't touch the PSU .
My brother said that if all the wiring is correct, and nothing else seems out of the ordinary... I've probably fried it? Is it possible static could have done it? Even though I'm extra conscious about that, before I even open the case I sit in 1 position, touch the radiator (just to make sure ) and then open the case, grab hold of the case with both hands for a few seconds and then go in. I also touch the case every minute or so just to make sure .
I might just wait until my brother can deal with it, so I don't do anything else to it lol.
Cheers for your help guys.
I could take on 28 five year old kids in a fight.
I could name 55 countries in 5 minutes.
My body makes a 58% effective human shield.
My dead body is worth £5750.
I have a 41% chance of surviving a zombie apocalypse.
Im 40% geek.
VodkaOriginally Posted by Ephesians
I think I might wait and do a computing engineering course at uni before I start trying to fix my own again .
It's alot more complex than I first realized tbh. After my exams, I might spend a while searching the internet for some info so next time I don't mess up so badly .
Also, someone in my house decided to stick a " DO NOT TOUCH " sign on my computer whilst I was away lol.
I could take on 28 five year old kids in a fight.
I could name 55 countries in 5 minutes.
My body makes a 58% effective human shield.
My dead body is worth £5750.
I have a 41% chance of surviving a zombie apocalypse.
Im 40% geek.
Check you haven't pulled out the power switch connectors on the motherboard....
I could take on 28 five year old kids in a fight.
I could name 55 countries in 5 minutes.
My body makes a 58% effective human shield.
My dead body is worth £5750.
I have a 41% chance of surviving a zombie apocalypse.
Im 40% geek.
I would have taken the gfx card out to get at the jumper mate..... You could try disconnecting the power switch connector and putting a 20p coin against the two power pins.... the power button might be broke, unlikely, but worth the 20 seconds it would take to do.... got another PSU you could borrow off someone? Good luck getting it sorted anyway, I know how bad it is when things don't go well....
Tbh, I didn't even think of taking the graphics card out to get at it =/.
I'll try the power button test, but it's unlikely. It worked one minute, didn't the next. Definately worth a try though.
Yup, my brother's got a spare PSU lying around (600W or something, more than enough) and it's corsair. I'll try that too.
It's most annoying because I've only had 1 day of use out of this thing (and what a day that was... crysis at high settings, bioshock at high, UT3 completely maxed out. Yum. Can't wait to be able to play them again .
I could take on 28 five year old kids in a fight.
I could name 55 countries in 5 minutes.
My body makes a 58% effective human shield.
My dead body is worth £5750.
I have a 41% chance of surviving a zombie apocalypse.
Im 40% geek.
why does your brother have a 600w corsair just lying around.... stranger and stranger
VodkaOriginally Posted by Ephesians
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