PC Froze, now won't boot?

My system froze while playing a game. Not a typical freeze, an entire system freeze with a small border of black/green on the top edge. Cntrl-alt-del did nothing. I powered down the PC and turned it back on. It powered up, green check light came on for both CD and DVD drive, red light came on for hard drive, but no green light for system power and no boot. It just sits there on but not on. It makes all of the usual sounds except for the "beep" then boot up. There were no odd squeals, grinds, etc before during or after the freeze.

I ruled out a few things by process of elimination. I unhooked my internet router to take that out of the equation. I hooked up a different hard drive. I pulled my ram one stick at a time, trying to boot between each one, and pulled all three and tried to boot. I disconnected my cd and dvd drive and tried booting with just the hard drive hooked up. I pulled my graphics card and tried booting. I tried a different cable between hard drive and motherboard. I cleared my cmos ram using the jumper. I did everything I could think of.

I managed to get it to boot two other times, but both times within 10 minutes it froze again and I was back to square one. Neither time I got it to boot had anything in common, and trying to immediately reboot after the freeze was unsuccessful.

My system has a Soyo motherboard, Intel P4 processor 1.8gig, 1024 ram (broken into two 256 and one 512), a maxtor 80 gig hard drive, geforce 5200 graphics card.

Has anyone experienced anything similar, or does anyone have any ideas? My first thought, and still my hunch, is that my motherboard took a crap, but I'm low on cash so I can't just randomly replace stuff and hope I stumble on the right answer. Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

The fact that the PC is not posting even with all the RAM removed certainly sounds like the mobo has failed (and the black/green border round the monitor confirms it as far as I'm concerned as my old PC did exactly that when the mobo failed).

There is always the possibility that the PSU has failed which would obviously be cheaper than a mobo. Have you anyway of checking the outputs from the PSU?

 

Sounds mobo-ish to me too but the fact that it boots for a little while then dies needs to be investigated.

Consider that it might be heating up (overheating) and at some threshold, poops out.

Take a look around the cpu, fan ,heatsink area and see if there are any obviously clogged airways, then get out the dustbuster and vacuum the same area. Its a shot in the dark but it might be the problem.

I really hope that that is your problem and that if it is, that your cpu isn't already cooked. Good luck.

 

I replaced both the power supply and the motherboard and I'm exactly where I was on Sunday. The PC powers up but does not post. The only thing I have left to try is the processor and I'm not too keen on wasting more money on something I'm not sure of

 

It had a 350w power supply, I replaced it with a 430w. I also replaced the motherboard.

 

It's entirely possible it's your processor and not the mobo. Mine acted similarly when the processor went out. See if you can bum one off a friend to try. If it is the mobo, it shouldn't hurt the processor.