PC no longer posts

Hey all,

This morning when I powered on my PC, it ran through the normal boot screen then hard froze to the screen that asks what OS I want to boot to (I have a partition with XP and another with 7). I had to hold the power down to force it to shut off. Then when attempting to power it on again, it didn't even show the boot screen. My monitor powered on but nothing shows on the screen.

I forced it off, disconnected everything from the PC like kb mouse, audio, other USB stuff, and powered it on again. Same result. Just a powered on monitor with nothing on it. I left it on for a bit and the monitor powered off with the power button blinking, as if I turned off the computer.
I forced it off again and tried once more. It booted up successfully and I played TF2 for a bit, and powered it off later on.

I thought the issue was resolved but I attempted to power it on now and I get the same blank screen. No boot screen or anything. The CD tray opens and closes fine.

I opened the case and it was pretty loaded with dust. I did my best to clean it out. I tried powering it on with each of the two hard drives disconnected but still same result. I also tried the 2nd video out on my video card (gforce 9800gtx oc) and also tried re-seating the graphics card but still the same result.

All of the board's capacitors look fine.

I'm using the ASUS P5Q Pro board, with 4gb of G-skill memory, a 640gb WD hd for my OS, a 1TB WD hd for my secondary drive, 650w Corsiar psu, and I forget what CPU is in it. Intel 3Ghz something, a Gforce 9800GTX OC Also, using a Samsung 22" 2253bw.

It's all worked fine for almost a year, with no hardware changes recently.
Normally I'd eliminate each piece of hardware as a suspect by trying it in another machine, but my only other machines are a laptop and an iPod touch.
I believe I've eliminated the hard drives as a suspect.

I read in another thread that the board should make a 'beep' if I power it on with the RAM and GPU removed.

I removed both. It still powers on, the fans are spinning a lot slower, but there's no 'beep' or any kind of alert.

Does this mean the board is toast?

 

hey i dont work for the site just thinking try resetting the CMOS with the jumper? only other thing id test is the powersupply on its own with a paperclip

 

Ha! We replied to each others post. The internet at it's best.

Thanks for the reply. I'll try resetting the CMOS right now.

Also, how would I test the PSU with a paperclip?..and the PSU seems to power everything. Why would you suspect the PSU?

 

couldent hurt testing it xD i had a simmiler problem that was solved with a new psu, if you look at your connector to your motherboard, you will see one green wire leading to the metal contact, and several black wires leading to contacts, stick one end of an all metal paperclip into the green (power) and the other end into a black (ground) plug the powersupply in and if the fan in it still cranks and it lights up its fine. dont touch the paperclip though D:

 

Is this the same way people suggest turning it on with out the power button. Like with a screwdriver?

When you say to stick a paperclip into the green and black, what do you mean?

 

not shure what your talking about but the wires leading into the 26 pin connector or whatever you got, theres one green wire leading to one metal contact inside the connecter and multiple blacks

http://www.overclock.net/faqs/96712-how-jump-start-power-supply-psu.html

plug it in after the paperclip is in place dont listen to the dude that made this lol

 

Ok so just a paper clip in the tiny green contact and one in any of the black, while unplugged, then plug it in?

What am I looking for once i try it. Just that it powers on? I would think the PSU works cuz the power is getting to the fans etc.

 

So I put the GPU and RAM back in, reset the CMOS jumper, by putting it to 2.3 for 10 sec, then back to 1.2. Plugged in the power, and powered the PC on.

It went to the ASUS "Press Del to set up" screen, however, I didn't have a keyboard plugged in. I only had a Wireless KB handy so I plugged in the receiver but it wasn't powering on. So I powered it back off and tried it while the receiver was plugged in but it wouldn't post again.

I tried to reproduce the issue again with a wired keyboard but it won't bring up the ASUS "Press Del to set up" screen any more even after resetting the CMOS again.

Grrrr.

Does this isolate the issue to the motherboard?