computer froze, reset it, now no post or beep

I have been using an old dell motherboard from 2004 with onboard graphics and a pentium 4 cpu as an HTPC. It worked fine for several months until the other day when the system froze playing a video. The image stayed on the screen but it was unresponsive. After a hard reset it will no longer post or beep.

The only components on the motherboard are the cpu, a single stick of ram, a case fan mounted to the cpu heatsink, and the hard drive. I tried unplugging the hard drive and all peripherals, i tried removing the ram, and i tried removing the cpu, all attempts had the same results; no post and no beep.

I read on here to replace the CMOS battery if it falls below 3v, so i tested the one it had in it and it was at 2.8v so i went down to radioshack and put a fresh one in it, it tested at around 3.3 volts or something. Still no post or beep.

I tested the system using a different power supply and it gave the same results, so im fairly sure the PSU is not the problem, but there is a very slight chance that PSU is bad, very slight.

The hard drive and fan will spin up, it acts like its going to boot and then it doesnt. I dont have another motherboard that uses the same ram or cpu socket type so i cannot test those components to see if they are working. I dont remember the kind of ram it takes but it was something fairly unpopular and not DDR, so getting more ram will probably be difficult. I have no idea what the socket type is except that it fits a pentium 4 chip and has two notches cut in the sides of the chip so that it can only fit in one way, so i dont know how feasible replacing the cpu would be.

Anyone have any ideas for what else i should troubleshoot?

 

Hi spanktastic2120,

Can you give us more to go on? what Windows are you running? What are your specs?

 

The version of windows, or if its even windows at all, is irrelevant. The motherboard will not post and does not beep to indicate an error.

From what i can tell by the stickers on the mobo it is a dell riptide e219542 rev a01, and i cant find anything on this online except a couple expired ebay links. I dont know any more about the ram and all i know about the cpu is that its a single core hyperthreaded pentium 4, and im pretty sure its under 3GHz.

 

Perhaps you fried your on-board GPU, if not not the mobo itself. Unless you really want to put in the effort and find another GPU, it' maybe time to bring Old Yeller in the back and put it out of it's misery.

Good luck!

 

I dont think the onboard graphics chip is something i can replace as its soldered to the board. As for testing if it or the board is fried, how can i go about that?

 

No you can't. From pics we see on the net, you seem to have a pci slot. Could be worth a shot.

 

I think the motherboards on those old P4's just give out eventually. Seems I had four different machines give up in the last 2 years. The last had a tiny leaking "capacitor" (not really a capacitor but some tiny component leaked some type of white goo.

Anyway, I usually found that old machines that sat unused for a period of time wouldn't boot up. I usually unplugged all devices including HD and CDROMs. Then reset CMOS by unplugging the machine and removing the battery for a couple of minutes. Then restarted with just monitor and keyboard. I'd try that a couple of times. (I've also found that unplugging and removing the battery overnight would sometimes make a difference although there is no technical reason a longer wait would make a difference.)

 

Ive tried booting it with no peripherals at all, just cpu and ram and it gives me the same thing. I dont think plugging in a keyboard and monitor would increase my chances. Ill try leaving the battery out overnight though, thanks.

 

I left the cmos battery out of the mobo all night and still cant get it to post or give a beep code.

If the problem is the onboard graphics and i plug in a graphics card would the mobo defaultly override onboard graphics and post? I know that in the bios for it and other mobos ive used there is an option to disable the onboard graphics.

 

Can you remember if it has ever beeped? I'm thinking if it has ever beeped then it should beep when you have no RAM in it or even if the video chip is bad.

That it gives no beep with no RAM would indicate that it is either dead or has never beeped.

The only things I can think of to check are be certain you reseated the CPU correctly and make sure when you switched power supplies that you connected the four pin square power lead by the CPU.

 

It used to beep. I dont remember if it would beep just as a startup beep or not, but it definitely beeps and prompts the user to hit f1 because there is no cpu fan plugged in. So every time you would turn it on it would complain about a cpu fan error and you had to hit f1. But yeah, it definitely beeped for that, and there is definitely still now cpu fan. Ive had to reset the cmos on it before so i know that its a default setting for it to wait for the user on that error.

I do have a fan for the cpu though, it just uses a molex connector instead of the cpu fan connector on the mobo. Im sure the cpu is seated correctly because it its etched on the sides to ensure it only goes in one way, and then has an old-school clamp that comes down over it to really press it to the mobo. I have the 4-pin connector in too, so im guessing the board has just died. All the capacitors look fine to me, and i cant see any evidence of burn marks on any of the circuitry, so whatever broke on it is beyond my knowledge to detect.

 

Yes, you have done all I could do. It seems those dell boards have a life of about 8 years. I had several of that age go bad on me for no apparent reason. They were little used but one by one they gave up the ghost.

I don't think it is just graphics. Almost any board will give a continuous beep when no RAM is installed. I think Dell's of that time (Intel boards) use to have graphics set as Auto in the default BIOS settings so it should recognize a PCI graphics card if you find one (and if it is a graphics problem rather than something with the board itself).

 

The last thing I can say which doesn't fit your sudden symptoms at all other than you have been making a lot of changes with that board is that I once had the clear CMOS jumper fall off a board when moving the machine. You might want to just verify that it is still attached and in the normal position.

 

If the mobo has a clear cmos jumper i cannot find it. The only jumper it has is labeled PSWD, so i think its for a pre-boot password. I found a diagnostics page from dell for the system i think this board came out of based on googling,
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/opgx280/en/ug/tools02.htm
The system diagnostic lights on it dont come on, and the power light stays solid yellow. So i think the board is toast.

 

II googled around after I posted and although I can't find any pictures of rev. 2 I think this is basically your board and the rtcrst pins are unjumpered by default. So there is no jumper to move. Clearing CMOS would be to jumper the two pins for a few seconds and then remove the jumper again. But it is essentially the same as unplugging and removing the battery and you tried that. http://www.toddtabberer.com/id/GX260.pdf Edit: This is not the correct link. But it odes show the location of the rtcrst pins and I have read they are unjumpered by default.

I know a blinking yellow power light (on Dell) is a power supply problem. I've seen posts where people with solid yellow have replaced power supplies and solved their problem. You might try the original or alternate PSU one more time before writing it off.
Other than that I'm basically out of suggestions.

 

I tried using the other power supply again with different core components (with ram, without ram, etc) and got all the same results. I think its time to pronounce the board dead, ive done everything i can.

 

R.I.P. old dell motherboard from 2004 with onboard graphics and a pentium 4 cpu...(a.k.a. Old Yeller)

But now you get to build a new PC. :hyper

 

last time i had a pc that froze but still showed an image rather than black screening or reseting it was a fried CPU
the pc would not respond on reset no beeps nothing

 

I found a replacement processor on amazon for 8 bucks, so ill give that a try since its not much to lose.

 

the problem with this kind of fault is unless you have a doner pc it can be quite frustrating trying to find whats packed in iv'e seen memory cause the same symptoms before now but this was on a motherboard with no speaker so no beeps could be heard ( if any ) but the symptoms you have described are exactly the same as the symptoms i had which turned out to be the cpu

unfortunately a fried motherboard would give the same symptoms but i think the pc would just go dead rather than freezing still showing an image

 

Well ill find out some time between the next 7 and 25 days. Shipping on amazon is ridiculous when the product isnt in an amazon warehouse.

 

good luck

 

Got the processor today, popped it in the motherboard and stuck the heatsink on, didnt bother to reapply thermal paste as i didnt intend to leave it on for long if it did work. It beeped and posted, having a bunch of errors about the configuration and time, probably from resetting the cmos. So i very joyfully turn it off again and remove the heatsink, give it a good gob of thermal paste, position it under the tv where it belongs and then reattached all the components. I plugged in the power supply before reattaching the heatsink and the computer turned on, so i quickly turned it off again, couldnt have been on for more than 5 seconds. Then i got it situated with the heatsink and its peripherals and now it wont beep or post again.

So, either in the 5 seconds it was on without a heatsink the cpu fried, the cpu was bad and only worked once, or the motherboard is bad and killing cpus. Your thoughts?

 

a cpu without a heat sink will fry in seconds with no time for thermal shutdown to save it so that would be my guess

running cpu's with no heat sink is a sure way of frying it

 

i dont think that the 5 or so seconds it was on was enough to fry the cpu. the computer was only on for as long as you have to hold the power button to make it shut off.

i know that several years ago when i first got into this kind of stuff i had tried to reapply thermal paste to a graphics card i had, so i removed all the screws and then couldnt get the heatsink off. i figured that there was a rivet or something i was missing, so i just stuck it back in the computer without reattaching the screws, if i couldnt pry it off i didnt think it would do any harm without the screws. so a little after that i started playing farcry when i heard a loud thunk from inside my case and within a couple seconds all of the colors in the game started to strobe through the spectrum. it looked like farcry had turned into mario kart on rainbow road. i exited the game and shut down the computer to find the heatsink had fallen off the card. what had held it on before was the cold thermal paste, once it warmed up it didnt hold them together.

anyway, point of the story is that card still works fine, so im thinking if THAT wasnt enough to fry a chip then what i did with this motherboard shouldnt have damaged it. but im no expert, thats why im here.

 

cpu's fry pretty quickly and from what i can gather you would be lucky to get past bios post
it's a while ago since i last saw a cpu fry through the lack of a heatsink but i know modern day cpu's draw even more current albeit at a lower voltage and that suggests to me it would heat up pretty damned quick

 

it was a 2004 pentium 4, not exactly modern.