Click to See Complete Forum and Search --> : Motherboard or power supply failure?
Bowtie
11-19-2003, 08:44 PM
Okay guys and girls, I'm pretty proficient with hardware but I've come across something that just pisses me off and I can't figure out. I recently swapped out hardware with another box and added some hard drives in order to make it my file server. At first the system would boot up but none of the drives would come up. I checked all the cables and jumpers and everything was correct. I unplugged all but a cdrom and one drive. It booted up (I had Suse Live Evaluation 8.2 in the CDrom) and I poked around on the lonely little drive that was hooked up. If I put anything other than that in the mix, no go. Just for giggles and grins I swapped in a new power supply. When I tried to start it up, all it did was start up the fans for about 3 or 4 seconds and then shut off. I disconnected everything except for the fans and ATX connector (of course) and still no good. I swapped in another power supply and it did the same thing. Keep in mind that the two power supplies that I swapped in were brand spanking new. The board is a Abit KT7A-RAID with an AMD 950mhz Duron processor and 512mb of memory. I'm about to make this a demolition project for new years if it keeps pissing me off. I'm at the end of my rope on this. Any suggestions?
JJ
On most mainboards, as you would know, there is a jumper for loading default settings and clearing the CMOS.
You could chagne that jumper to clear the CMOS, leva it for a few minutes, swap it back over and see if that helps?:confused:
Otherwise I would suggest you try using some spare RAM, if you have it or take out all RAM (if you have more than one stick) bar one and see if that helps.
Good luck!:)
Bowtie
11-19-2003, 09:38 PM
I'll try the memory thing and let you know what happens. I've already cleared the cmos before I posted. Sorry, left that out.
Bowtie
11-19-2003, 09:58 PM
Okay, tried pulling the memory, no go. Flashed the cmos yet again, single beep for memory missing. Put memory back in and hooked up drives for giggles and grins, booted up and I went to cmos to change cdrom as first boot device. Save and exit. Nothing after that. Try hitting reset, nada. Power off and back on, nada. :mad:
melojo
11-19-2003, 10:33 PM
I had a similiar problem and it turned out to be a graphics card. Swaped cards worked fine.(I know this sounds odd, but that was the problem for me). The graphics card was a 4x to 8x agp. I found out that the motherboard i was using only supports 1.5 Volt graphics cards. some 1x, 2x, and 3x use 1.5 some don't - 4x uses 1.5 and 8x uses .80 hope this helps.
melojo :)
pezplaya
11-19-2003, 10:42 PM
Just for giggles and grins I swapped in a new power supply. When I tried to start it up, all it did was start up the fans for about 3 or 4 seconds and then shut off.
That happend to me once when I had the power and reset switch jumpers off by 1 pin... probalby not the problem though.
Bowtie
11-19-2003, 10:51 PM
Well I swapped an old Voodoo 3 PCI video in place of the All-in-wonder AGP I had in there. It booted up, got into cmos to change cdrom as first boot device, save and exit, nada. I shut the power off at the power supply, turn it back on and boots up to the CD, get about halfway through the Suse "welcome" logo animation and it stops. Any time I try to do a reset, it doesn't come back up. The drive light and the cdrom light show their initial activity through the lights and that's it. Will check the switch jumpers just to make sure.
JJ
Bowtie
11-19-2003, 11:02 PM
jumpers and such are all okay. I'm at a loss. The hard drives and cdrom are all correct in their connections and detected during POST. I had systems not boot when the master/slave is set wrong but that's not the case here. It seems when the cdrom goes to hand off data to a hard drive in the boot system, it stops. I've got another motherboard/processor I could swap in here but I really don't want to have to take this damned monster apart again. Maybe it will be tomorrow's project. Keep the suggestions coming in the meantime. Thanks.
JJ
motorman33
11-19-2003, 11:30 PM
Sounds like one of the things you haven't tried is the cd rom. I have the same setup abit/duron and love it. Did you reseat the processor? Also, are you sure the mobo isn't touching the case...re: standoffs OK? Did you change IDE cables? Do a TuffTest or other floppy diag to see if it'll run on another OS.
Bowtie
11-19-2003, 11:34 PM
Good point about another OS. One of the drives has W2K on it. I'll hook it up to boot and see what it does. The cdrom is working fine. I'll swap cables just to see. The kicker of all of this is that all of this hardware has been working, granted in a different configuration, but working nonetheless. I just swapped mobo/processor combo with another case that I had running, and the other system came up with no problems. This one on the other hand is my worst nightmare. Me and my damned ideas.
Bowtie
11-19-2003, 11:59 PM
Fsck it!!! Nothing seems to be working and I've already spent a week under this fscking desk troubleshooting this damned pos. Changed out memory, cables, video cards, processors, power supplies, etc. etc. The mobo is the next victim of the back yard barbeque. I'm swapping mobo's tomorrow and if the new one works, I'll be on cloud 9 and so pissed at the same time. This board was working flawlessly in my W2K server and now I can't even get the damned thing to boot up to even install anything. If the new mobo fails too, the whole fscking thing is in da garbage. I don't want to even look at it anymore. I'm tired and I'm going to bed before I really do something stupid with it. Thanks for the suggestions guys. I wish something would have worked.
Just a thought.....I replaced had my mobo recently replaced (updated from a bx440 slot one to a Athlon XP on a KS board. The person who did the work at my request looked at the board selection to make sure it would work with Linux. Are you sure the chip on your main board is compatable with Linux? Some boards have a VIA chip I think which is a problem.
The Whizzard
11-20-2003, 01:01 AM
Originally posted by Bowtie
Fsck it!!! Nothing seems to be working and I've already spent a week under this fscking desk troubleshooting this damned pos. Changed out memory, cables, video cards, processors, power supplies, etc. etc. The mobo is the next victim of the back yard barbeque. I'm swapping mobo's tomorrow and if the new one works, I'll be on cloud 9 and so pissed at the same time. This board was working flawlessly in my W2K server and now I can't even get the damned thing to boot up to even install anything. If the new mobo fails too, the whole fscking thing is in da garbage. I don't want to even look at it anymore. I'm tired and I'm going to bed before I really do something stupid with it. Thanks for the suggestions guys. I wish something would have worked. What are the specs of the power supplies used? How many HDDs and CDROMs are you trying to power? How many PCI, ISA and AGP slots are being used? Do you have the correct FSB, multiplier and voltage settings for the CPU, RAM and AGP?
I'm guessing the power supplies you used aren't giving you enough juice. I've had the exact same problems in the past because the power supplies weren't up to par.
If your're going to BBQ the stuff, send it my way. I like playing with broken stuff.;)
I know where you are coming from Bowtie! I too have had problems like this that I have used all I could to resolve and it still doesn't work! You have done well not to have thrown it yet!
You could check what motorman33 said about the mobo touching the case or a loose screw sitting on a part of the mobo, (like between the PCI slots) as this could short it out. (Happened to me once!)
I would next remove all expansion cards and disconnected all IDE/SCSI devices and only leave in the video. If it boots to the BIOS load screen and complains about DISK BOOT FAILURE and doesn't reboot after a few minutes, it would rule out a mobo/cpu error. Then you could add one piece of hardware one at a time to find the problem. It could be as The Whizzard said, the power supply may not be able to power all devices.
Have you attempted to Load BIOS defaults?? That has sorted a number of problems for me in the past!
I hope this helps!
:)
jolly1701
11-20-2003, 06:06 AM
do u have a boot floppy
if so use the boot floppy and go into fdisk
check to see if it can read the hdd via fdisk
if it can read the hdd the problem will most proberly lay with the cdrom
disconnect the sound/speaker wire from the mobo
as this can sometimes short the cdrom out
if it cant read the hdd change the ide cable
and try again, if this fails move the cable over to ide 2 and put your cdrom on it as slave
if it reads it now its the ide slot
(maybe disabled in bios)
(please check that the ide cable is the correct way around, ive put one on wrong before)
Bowtie
11-20-2003, 10:25 AM
Okay, I'm awake and going for round two.........after breakfast.....hehe The power supply is a 300 watt. I know, not very big but I have NEVER had any problems before, especially since the mobo/processor was just running in another box with a 300 watt supply. However, I can see where things can change with different hardware. I'll strip it down and start from scratch here in a few.
The Whizzard
11-20-2003, 11:35 AM
Originally posted by Bowtie
Okay, I'm awake and going for round two.........after breakfast.....hehe The power supply is a 300 watt. I know, not very big but I have NEVER had any problems before, especially since the mobo/processor was just running in another box with a 300 watt supply. However, I can see where things can change with different hardware. I'll strip it down and start from scratch here in a few. I'd recomend at least a 400 watt supply. 300 watts is barely enough to run that CPU, 2HDDs and a CDROM with 3 PCI/ISA/AGP slots being used.
Bowtie
11-20-2003, 07:23 PM
IT LIVES!!! I swapped out the mobo/processor and put in the Asus A7V8X-X board (I know, not the greatest board) an an Athlon XP 1800. Put it all together and it came up with only one problem. It didn't like the non-eec memory that I had put on it. Swapped out the memory and it runs like a champ. Now I've got to go and partition and install linux. Decisions, decisions. Fedora, Suse 8.1, Drake 9.1, or the dozen other distros that I've burned recently. As far as the power supply, I'm just going to break down and the the 530 watt supply and not have to worry about upgrading that for a long while. Kinda pricey but worth it I suppose. Thanks for all the help and suggestions guys. I've never had a system be this stubborn before. When the mobo went out on other systems, it was visible so I don't know what to make of the Abit board. May try it in a small desktop box later.
Glad to hear you finally sorted it out Bowtie! A+ for perseverence!:)
Bowtie
11-20-2003, 11:41 PM
Thank you tmc. I hate to lose to an inanimate object.....LOL
Nu-Bee
11-21-2003, 01:16 AM
This place has an awesome troubleshooting help. It helped me several time in the past.
http://www.directron.com/howtobuilyou.html