Need confirmation on hardware failure

I just wanted to make sure that i have the problem figured out before i go spend any money to fix it.

A have an asus M2n32 Sli-deluxe mother board with a amd 64 x2 3.0ghz processor and the hard drive is irrelevant because ive swapped it out with others and it still has problems.

The problem is as follows. I power down my pc (this inclusdes a warm boot, cold boot, and even unplugging for 30 seconds to let the capacitors discharge before plugging back in). Every time, without exception, i have had the same problem and that problem is that AFTER i start up the power it will make it to the primary boot screen and then it will freeze in place. The lights on my keyboard will disappear at the [Press DEL to enter SETUP] screen (referring to bios setup of coarse) which disables my ability to even enter bios. I have also tried starting it with the vista cd in but it doesnt really matter because it doesnt even get far enough to bother with boot drive selection.

So I'm pretty sure i need a new motherboard...if anyone else has any other theories or answers, I'm all ears.

Thanks in advance,
-Kyle

 

Do you get any beep codes out of the POST? First off, is there a speaker on the mobo, or connected to it for POST beeps. Try starting it with the RAM removed. Should beep like crazy.

 

yes i have the aimee (check acronym) bios beeps setup on it...and yes the the beeping went ape shit when the ram was removed.

so now what?

 

So with the RAM installed, you get the correct beep when you start the puter, just no OS? At what screen does it stop at?

I would clear the CMOS to set the board back to default in case some settings have been changed. Reset your video card and make sure the extra motherboard power is plugged in.

I am not the best at diagnosing hardware like this. I am lucky and almost always have extra parts to test. I do think that you need to look farther than the mobo. If it beeps like that with no RAM, the mobo should be ok. If you are using 2 sticks of RAM, try booting with just one at a time. I will help as much as I can. :cool

 

it stops at the "Del to enter SETUP" screen...pretty much the screen to enter bios, except its not letting me enter bios because the keyboard shuts off and wont let me enter it.

before this ever happened though it would ALWAYS give me a "Press 1 to enter SETUP" screen whenever i restarted the computer, as if the entire startup was corrupted in some way. It didnt matter if it was restarted properly or not it just kept saying it...i had reset the bios to default and it still said it so i can rule out hardware settings and hard drives. ill try the 1 stick of ram at a time thing and post later with the results.

 

I finally got some free time to test out the ram and u were right. one of my 4gb cards was cooked. im not too upset though cuz my L1, and L2 cache appearently are considered ram according to vista so i still have 3.75 gbs of ram.

 

It is always nice when you get it fixed up without spending any $$! :-D Not sure what you mean by the L1 and L2, those are used by the CPU. If you have onboard video, and 1 4GB stick of RAM, the video card is most likely using some of the ram.

 

Hello everyone. Glad to see that souredspirit is getting off that easy. 1 stick of RAM is definately better than what he thought he was looking at. Good going FredG.