This is a bizarre one. Friend wants me to see if I can get his old PC running again for his girlfriend. She cooks for us from time to time, so happy to help.
On to the issue:
Plug it in and I can hear the HDD spin up (SATA 250GB that works when hooked to an external USB adapter cable, can read the old users stuff on it) and all the fans start moving, so power seems to be okay. But DVD drive does nothing but light up it's LED. Can't open the door, doesn't spin up after CD is put in after manually opening with paper clip. Weird. Figured drive was blown so grabbed a known good working CD drive and popped it in, hooked it all up, same thing. Weird. Took drive out, hooked to external power supply, everything works fine. Stick it back in, hook all wires, no go. Removed IDE cable and power back up, drive works fine, door opens, I can hear CD spinning a bit. Hook IDE cable back up to back of drive, no go. Remove IDE cable from mobo side and power back up, drive works fine. Power back down, replace IDE cable with another from a working machine so know IDE cable is good, with cable hooked to drive and mobo, nothing but LED light. Remove from mobo slot (2) and works fine. Try IDE 1. Nothing.
Also, no video AT ALL. Tried two different PCI-E cards that I know work, and 2 PCI cards that I know work, nothing. Monitor doesn't even seem to be getting signal (15" LCD test monitor, it's a Dell, works off laptop, so monitor is good, but get nothing from this PC).
Front panel lights fine, drives, fans (case and CPU), CD spinning (when not connected to IDE port), just no video and optical drive won't work when connected to either IDE port on mobo. Tried removing RAM totally and in other slots, seems to have no effect.
ANY ideas???
Last edited by malongfe : 11-19-2009 at 01:08 AM.
Reason: added further info
Power Supply is RAIDMAX (www.raidmax.com > Products > Power Supplier > Workstation PSU then RX-450K, sorry, no direct link) RX-450K (KY-550ATX) ATX 12V. Dad has my multimeter for working on his fishing boat in prep for Florida Keys trip, I'll have to grab it this weekend.
Tried disconnecting all power leads to extra hardware (optical, HDD) left all mobo leads plugged in and disconnected front lights. Tried with one RAM stick, then the other (two of them avail for this, 512MB sticks that worked in it before, also tried with no RAM) then neither leaving all slots open. Mobo has piezo speaker, but not a peep from it at any point. Also tried hooking speaker to output on back of board, not a peep. Left known good working PCI card in, all fans spin up, but no vid output. Tried PCI-E cards, still nothing.
As I said, will grab multimeter this weekend and follow directions on supplied site, only issue is I won't be able to run the mentioned Prime95, but will find out if there is 'any' voltage at the rails, should tell me if PSU is not firing on some of them?
Running system in past, but has been in a closet. Last ntuser.dat.LOG file off the SATA HDD in the system (read while plugged into a USB-SATA converter cable) is dated 08/30/2007, so it seems to have been idle for a good bit of time.
Not my system, so I don't know too many specs on it, it has a AMD branded fan on the processor. Any possibility to get a manual on the mobo mailed over, if avail? If I need to start tearing apart, would like to have...
if you had installed the mb, i would have suggested you pull it and set it up out side the case. that won't be necessary since it had been a working system.
Will post PSU info as soon as I get the multimeter...
That is one of several names he goes by when it comes to Chaintech mobos!!
__________________ F@H runs on every computer I have, how about your cool system?Why F@H?? Click me! DreamCatcher v3.5 >> TA760G M2+, PII X3 720 BE @ 3.50GHz (AQ H2O Cooled), EVGA 8800GTS, Seagate 7200.10 ST380815AS 80GB, 2 x WD5000KSs, TWIN2X2048-8500C5DF, MODU82+ EMD525AWT, XP Home SP2 BluHaz reDux v3.0 >> Retired Yoda’s SMN v3.0 >> See System Pull Down (up for sale BTW) Kermit v3.0 >> TA790GXE, PII X4 945 @ 3.60GHZ(air), XFX GTX260-216 BE, Raptor X, TWIN2X4096-8500C5D, OCZ700MXSP ModXStream Pro, XP Home SP2
Okay, multimeter in hand, tested all power cables with PC plugged in and turned on, with no drives connected and front wires disconnected. There is a PCI vid card in and one stick of RAM in Slot 1.
24 pin connector:
All Red pins = 5.162
All Yellow pins = 12.13
All Orange pins = 3.396
Purple = 5.19
Green = .022
Blue = -12.16 (negative)
Gray = 4.848
Brown & Orange in one = 3.396
White = -4.919 (negative)
4 pin connector on mobo (two black on one side, two yellow on other):
no puffy caps (or at least obvious ones), tried clearing CMOS, even replaced board battery. Still no video from any card we try, in any slot = three PCI and one PCI-E. So, can't really tell if anything is working or not. Without video, this is pretty much a dead machine, or so it seems to me. Plenty open to other suggestions, but it is currently blind! And thanks for all the help so far, I have just been absolutely AMAZED at the response time, you are TRULY amazing.
been working on getting an ati and a nvidia vid cards running on a win 7 machine. work in progress.
ready to go outside to get some chores done before the snow flies.
as to your system.
only 2 other things i would try.
first reseat the cpu. you'll need to clean up the thermal compound and reapply with new.
second would be to set up the system on a non conductive surface outside the case. system can be started by touching a screw driver to the posts for power button.
In talking to the new owner, I was mistaken, I thought it was his old system, it turns out that it was in one of his rental properties, left in the garage. He knows it was working (and I verified by the NT.USER.LOG modified date on the hard drive) that it WAS working at one time, he had to go work on the house and used this computer to look something up, but that WAS in 2007 some time. At some point it stopped working and the renters put it in the garage, where it sat until he reclaimed it a couple months ago. Who KNOWS what happened to it sitting out there - freeze, thaw, wet maybe? Based on the fact that NONE of the slots work with a known good working video card (three PCI slots) and the foozled IDE ports (no optical drive will function correctly when the IDE cable is plugged into the mobo), we finally decided the board has some major difficulties and at this point it is pointless to keep thrashing away at this. He is repurposing the 250 GB SATA drivee that was in it (lots of nice tasty storage for video) and pulling the PSU (which we now knows functions perfectly fine) in case of future need elsewhere and we are going to recycle the mobo and he will stick the case (a nice case) down in the basement for some future project.
The amount of obviously damp at one time dust I had to remove from the CPU cooling fins and that was caked on the fan, and elsewhere on the board just points heavily to mobo fritzing and unfortunately, I can no longer battle this thing when there are other opportunities that present themselves.
I thank you so much for the direction and support and have already recommended this forum to a couple other people, I trust they will receive the outstanding support I have gotten over the past week. I think we can consider this one closed with a diagnosis of 'bad board'.
(Incidentally, I had tried reseating all the reseatable chips at one point, anything that could be unplugged, made clean and replugged was tried to no discernible effect)
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