Hardware Problem

[vilekyle]

Last night, while playing World of Warcraft I encountered what has turned out to be a bizarre problem with my desktop. While I was playing, suddenly, everything just locked up and left me no other option than a forced re-boot. But, when I rebooted, everything came back on apart from the monitor.

After a good couple of hours of investigating I came up with some stange findings.

1) When I remove the monitor cable, the 'No Signal' sign flashes up on the monitor... Yet when I plug it back in, the sign disapears but there is still no display.

2) I tried testing my ram, I have 2x512mb chips and I tried them seperatly/together in every possible combination yet recieved the same problem every time.

3) Power gets to my mouse (it lights up) but no power gets to the keyboard. I assumed this may be because the keyboard usually doesnt power up until windows has booted, so I left it on a while longer... and still nothing.

4) I have, so far, tried 3 different monitors, that I know all work... and again, I get the same result every time.

I have tried everything up to literally booting it up bare... and yet again, the same thing happens.

I've read some posts of people who have encountered a similar problem, who all seem to think its the RAM. Something to do with a BIOS update or something, I'm not entirely sure. I'm not really a hardware person.

so... Anybody have any ideas before I got out and buy new RAM?

 

[satrow]

Do you have onboard graphics or a separate video card?

My take - could be RAM, if you have onboard graphics. CPU, PSU, bad PCI card, bad drive.

Start with the basics, disconnect all but keyboard, 1 stick of RAM and the CPU - what happens? Any Beeps? What combination?

 

[vilekyle]

I have an onboard graphics card but I am running it from a seperate ATI Radeon 9900. I have tried the monitor in both cards and still nothing.

I did try it bare bone last night, I got not beeps and exactly the same thing happened.

From everything I have read on other forums it seems it is either bad RAM or my BIOS needs an update...

Personally I think it is the RAM, it seems to me the only logical explanation... I just dont understand why it would go from Working just fine to what it is now, literally in an instant.

 

[satrow]

Could a power spike have taken out the RAM, perhaps? Or the CPU has died?

What board/CPU do you have?

 

[satrow]

What happens when you pull both the RAM sticks and try to start it?

 

[vilekyle]

Not sure what the name of my motherboard and cpu is, will have to check tonight when i'm at home. All I know is that they are 'Asus'.

When I pull both sticks of RAM out and try to boot I get a Beep Sequence.

 

[satrow]

Ok, now it's sounding like bad RAM.

I'm still not convinced it wasn't triggered by a PSU rail developing a fault, or a fault in the motherboard - seems odd for both sticks to go down simultaneously.

 

[rcp032]

How do you know your keyboard is not getting power? When you reset or first power on your system do you ever get a flashing of your LEDs on the keyboard (assuming PS/2)? If not, its basically down to your CPU/RAM/MoBo/PSU. Of course it could be the keyboard or mouse as well, but that is rather unlikely.

When you said you did a bare bones boot - did you disconnect everyones power suppy as well as disconnecting them from the MoBo? How clean is the system - does air get through - is the fan spinning on your CPU? Does your CPU heatsink get hot to the touch?

What kind of mouse do you have PS/2 or USB.

 

[vilekyle]

My keyboard is Gaming Keyboard with flip up LCD screen that usually powers up when windows boots up... Which leads me to believe that despite not being able to see, windows is not booting.

Yeah, that is how I did my bare bone boot, still to same result.

Yesterday I went and bought new RAM... which didnt solve the problem. So today I have returned the RAM and bought a new MoBo which I am going to test tonight, Hopefully It will solve the problem. Guess i'll post back tomorrow if it doesnt work.

Thanks for the response

 

[rcp032]

ok, there are two speperate issues here then with your keyboard. I am assuming when your computer works normally, you can enter BIOS set-up. If so - this means your keyboard does actually get power.

If it is a PS/2 or USB keyboard, the BIOS will initialize it and give it power long before the OS is involved.

However, with the LCD on your keyboard that doesn't turn on until windows boots - there is going to be some windows driver that handles the LCD on your keyboard seperately than its basic functionality.

So - apart from the LCD, do you have the num lock/caps lock/scroll lock LEDs? Can you get them to cycle at all during boot? Also is your mouse USB?

If your mouse is USB and its getting power, then that should indicate your memory is working fine because USB requires memory to operate.

 

[nashull]

Heres what I would do:
Disconnect Power
Take everything out of the computer except psu, ram, and mobo (ie disconnect drives and agp card, nic card, etc..)
Reset the BIOS with the battery taken out or with a jumper.
This should reenable your onboard graphics and let you know what is going on with the ram.
Do you usually here beeps from the mobo (some need an external speaker for the beeps)
After start connecting drives and if you have a floppy drive or better yet a bootable usb drive, run some ram tests.

 

[PyroTyger]

This sounds like it's almost certainly your Power Supply - whether that means your PSU or the power-management electrics on your motherboard. It's hard to be dead sure though.

When you say everything but the monitor turns on, do you mean you get all the usual noises and you can hear the bootup, hard drive doing its thing etc, or do you just mean the lights come on & fan spins up?

If it's the former, I'm probably wrong and it could be your graphics or (if neither on-board graphics nor the card work) the motherboard (if your AGP/PCI-E bus is knackered).

If it's the latter, and you're getting juice but no fire, then it's almost definitely the PSU or Mobo. If there is SOME power coming through but not enough to kick everything into life, you'll get the effects you've described. It's possible a power-spike damaged the RAM, but then you'd be getting a RAM-error beeping message from the mobo - check with a different stick of RAM if you want to be sure. I really don't think it's that.

If it is the PSU, you just need to try a different one to eliminate that possibility. If it is, as I suspect, the motherboard power management circuits, it's going to be hell to properly diagnose.

By all means, try the rest of the tips in this thread to eliminate other possibilities, but don't be too surprised if you end up having to replace your mobo. Sorry!