MoBo or Hard Drive failure?

Hi guys, my first post here. Hopefully someone can guide me through some trouble shooting.

In the middle of copying some files, I got a "this program has performed an illegal operation.... bla, bla, bla". when I pushed "OK" it went into a full reboot, only it never started back up. Upon start, nothing happens. I've got power (fans running) but I never get a starting beep or any beep codes. I get no power lights on my cd and dvd drives and can't open the drawers. I have no cursor and can't even access my bios setup page. The hard drive activity light stays on constantly. I've tried reseating the hard drive cables, no go.

I've had hard drive failures before, but i've always been able to access my bios page, so I suspect a mobo failure? Any ideas where to start trouble shooting?

Thanks in advance,
Bassguy

 

The first place to start is to unplug all of the IDE cables from the systemboard. You may have to wait for an error timeout; but, you ought to be able to access the BIOS. If you still can't, unplug the AC cord, remove the CMOS battery, wait 20 minutes, and try again.
If that still doesn't get anywhere, post back and I'll walk you through the next steps.
If it does, put back the IDE devices one at a time (and I would reconnect the "C" drive last)

 

I've had this before, and had the query answered on MG and with a bit of my own detective work.

My system crashed and I had to do a hard reset, there after the PC just hung and didn't go to the BIOS screen, just sat there, no beeping, the fans where whirring away, pretty much the exact symptoms you have.

It turned out the motherboard was fried. I bought a new motherboard and everything worked fine subsequently.

 

Thanks for your responses.

davismccarn, I've tried everything you suggested.... still a no go. I have also now removed all PCI devices, reseated the video card, cpu and memory and swaped in a different hard drive and checked the power supply with a volt meter (and reseated all the power connectors).... It's just not going into POST at all.... no beeps, no screen activity. This is a 1 1/2 year old Asus P4P800S-X MoBo. If you've got any other suggestions, I'm all ears. but I'm beginnig to think I'm going to end up buying myself a new MoBo for Christmas.

BG.

 

Yuck!
There was a virus many years ago that flashed the Bios with junk; but, that was a long time ago and far away.....
On any PC, when you turn it on, the LED's on the keyboard should all light up for a fraction of a second and then go out. Power on to the keyboard lights them and, after the Bios has tested 64 KB of scratch memory, tested the DMA and interrupt controllers, it sends a command to the keyboard, initializing it, and turning off the LED's.
If that is happening, remove your video card and turn it on. You should get one long and two short beeps, indicating a video board failure.
If you get that, try another video card.
If you don't, the systemboard is toast.

 

Faulty power supplies can also cause symptoms similar to those listed. It's probably the mobo, but if you can, swap out the power supply real quick and see what happens. I'd sure rather replace a PS than a mobo any day. It's cheaper and alot less time consuming, and just flat out easier!

hopperdave2000

 

Well... I've got no keyboard LED flash. Have already tried to boot without a keyboard or mouse to force some beeps... removed the video card, no beeps still. I have an old case w/power supply laying around I can try as a last resort, but as I said, I've already checked the voltage with a meter. Most likely will break out the butter and call it toast.

Has anyone ever had any luck with warranty returns to Asus? This board has a "Limited" 3 year warranty. I suspect by the time I pay to ship it back and then wait the usual 6-35 weeks, I would be better off just looking for a cheap replacement board. Would like to be able to squeeze another year or so of service out of this system.

Thanks for your help.

BG

 

You can't expect these things to last forever. I mean it IS 1 1/2 years old!

 

LOL... yeah, that's also about the same lenght of time it takes for them to change the pin configurations on the next generation of CPUs isn't it? Finding that my options for replacing this board (478 socket) are kind of limited.

Was looking at this Asus board:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131527

but after reading the customer reviews, I'm leaning towards this Intel now:

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=241316

Never used an Intel board before.... but I don't see how it could be any worse that the Asus.

 

If you want to avoid starting from scratch with Windows, get another P4P800 and pursue the warranty for backup.
http://search.ebay.com/asus-p4p800s-x_W0QQfnuZ1QQfsooZ1QQfsopZ3QQxpufuZx

 

Crud!... you know I didn't even think about Ebay. I already ordered the Intel board. I had already planned on pursuing the warranty though.

Are you saying that I won't be able to plug and play the new board with the old hard drive? I'm pretty sure I've swapped out hard drives before without reformatting, and windows installed the generic windows drivers for the different board and chipset. (at least in win 98, I've got xp pro now) All I really need to do is be able to back up some files off the hard drive to DVD. Then reformatting and reinstalling windows is no big deal. Or should I use an old refomatted hard drive for a fresh install, and then add the second hard drive as a slave afer everything is running and then copy the files to DVD? I've got 2 other older computers and a spare IDE hard drive, but this is the only computer I have with a SATA hard drive. Thus the problem

BG

 

Rats! I'm sorry; but, I didn't get any notification you had replied.....

In Windows NT, 2000, 2003, and XP, HAL.DLL is compiled during the installation. If you replace the systemboard, the new one either needs to be the same chipset or you will need to reinstall Windows to compile a new one.

That reinstall is fraught with danger. Sometimes it works fine; other times it merrilly trashes all of your software (i.e Office doesn't work after) or deletes your user data.

Worse; if you only have the original 2001 OEM version, there is no option to do a repair install.

 

Well I guess I was pretty lucky. I did a XP repair installation, and although it was a major time consuming pain in the arse, everything is up and running fine now and I lost no important data on my hard drive. I was able to boot and install the new Intel chipset/board drivers. The old Asus board had an different Intel chipset, and although it ran like my first 286, it did run with the wrong drivers Had to reinstal every hardware driver and a few programs, but other than that, everything works as good or better than before. The old board is going back for warranty repair after Christmas.

Thanks for your help!

BG

 

Good!
If you want to make sure the old stuff is really gone, do this:
Start -> Run ->(type) CMD<enter>
In the CMD window that appears, type:
set DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1<enter>
devmgmt.msc<enter>
The device manager will appear. Click on View -> Show hidden devices.
What this will do is give you a device manager with every hardware device Windows ever thought was installed rather than what it thinks is there now. In your case, look for grayed out items in Ide ATA/ATAPI, Network Adapters, Processors, Sound, System Devices, and USB. Leave any of the sound and video codecs that are grayed; but, any hardware listed which is not present (grayed out) you should right-click on and uninstall.

 

Davis,

Wow.... great tip.... loads of junk in there. Will wade through it tommorrow after the effects of the company Christmas party wears off.

Thanks,

BG