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Q9450 won't boot

dean08

dean08

dean08

Associate
Joined
5 Jun 2008
Posts
18
Location
Chippenham
My custom built machine will no longer boot. It does not even get as far as the BIOS screen. It has worked fine for several months, but suddenly it will no longer boot. I have changed nothing on the PC and the CPU has never been overclocked.

It is a Q9450 and my motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3P (both bought from Overclockers). All has worked fine for several months. When I boot up there is a blue diagnostic LED called Q9450 CPU_LED on the motherboard which continues to flash. This suggests a problem with the CPU.

I read on this forum about a Q6600 not booting up when it was cold. I tried blowing hot air towards the CPU but it made no difference. I've tried resetting the CMOS but no luck.

Do I have a duff CPU? Seems strange why it would suddenly no longer work. This CPU has always run very cool so I can't see how it could have overheated in any way. I presume the motherboard is OK. The only way to prove that would be to try replacing the CPU but that would be an expensive exercise if that turns out not to be the problem.

Should I contact OC support for a replacement CPU? I've tried contacting Gigabyte support for suggestions but so far no reply.
 
Sorry I forgot to mention that. Yes the fans spin up OK and I can hear the hard drive for a couple of seconds.

I have two sticks of Crucial Ballistix 1Gb memory. I tried booting up with one stick but no difference, then I took out the stick and replaced it with the other stick and tried again. The blue CPU led on the motherboard continues to flash.
 
Does your motherboard have an LCD/LED POSTer? Or does it have its POST speaker installed so you can reference the beep/error code?

edit: looks like it will just be a POST beep code for your board.
 
I've tried with 1 stick off memory. No luck.

There are no POST beep codes that I can hear. The motherboard does have a number of LEDs to indicate if a component (including CPU and memory) or a device (including PCI and SATA devices) work abnormally.

The only LED lights that are lit up are the CPU LED which flashes blue. I have noticed an ACPI LED lit up too. The motherboard manual says this:

"There are 4 embedded ACPI LEDs which indicate the system power status (S0, S1, S3, S4, S5) to prevent potential hardware damage due to improper plug/unplug actions".

The S0 LED is lit a solid green. Any idea what that means? I haven't touched anything inside the case for months so not sure why that would light up, or whether it is normal.

Duroxis - by reseating do you mean take the CPU out and reseat it?

Also for info, the motherboard has a series of phase LEDs (6 in total) which indicate the CPU loading. The higher the CPU loading, the more the number of lighted LEDs. LEDs numbered 1 to 4 are lit green, 5 and 6 are lit red. Don't know if that is important.
 
Try another Cpu in the board and/or try the Cpu in another board .

Both 'useless' suggestions I know :( if you only have one cpu/board but cannot think of any others that will actually give you the answer that you need.

Only other thought was did it 'just' stop or was there a pre-amble?

Followed by further thought of Psu ?
 
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This may be of use:-

• On-board diagnostic LED's. The EP45-DS3R has seven of these leds which indicate a malfunction is occurring whether it be CPU, memory, PCIe16/8/4/1, PCI, SATA or IDE. The DS3P also has another set of four LED's that signify the state of the ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) which act as a gentle reminder of how much power your CPU is using. Think of it like a graphic equalizer - red=heavy load, yellow=medium and green=low. Yet another nice addition!
 
I think the cheapest CPU is a Celeron for around £25 so that is one possibility. I don't have another motherboard to try anything out.

Regarding the ACPI LED. Having a quick browse on wikipedia it refers to power management so perhaps there is an issue there. I did put my PC into hibernate state a lot over the last few months rather than completely shut down. No idea if that is significant. Perhaps it is stuck in some hibernate state it won't come out of, although surely doing a reset and clearing the CMOS would clear that.

Two or three times when restoring from hibernate over the last few months I have got the Vista equivalent of the BSOD and the PC would restart. I applied a BIOS update around 2 weeks ago which was meant to fix issues with Vista not resuming from hibernate sometimes. My PC worked fine since then and has only started not booting up in the last day or two. Again no idea if the BIOS update has contributed to any problems, but since my PC worked fine for over a week following the upgrade it doesn't sound like it.

I could try reseating the CPU and I do have another PSU which I could try.
 
I would buy a really cheap stick of memory to test with. Crucial Ballistix is well known for failing.
 
I have two sticks of 1Gb 1066Mhz Crucial Ballistix and tried booting up with each stick separately. I'd be surprised if both sticks have failed.

I'm willing to give your idea a shot though. Any suggestions on cheap memory from the Gigabyte supported memory list?

Here is my plan of action so far:
  • Reseat Q9450
  • Try my Antec PSU from a spare machine
  • Try cheap Intel celeron 430 1.8Ghz CPU (£26 incl. VAT)
  • Try cheap memory

Hopefully from all that I can figure out where the fault lies.
 
Have you tried the memory in all the slots?

From experience it's very possible that two sticks of Crucial Ballistix will die at the same time.

Tbh I would just pick up the cheapest 256mb or 512mb stick of PC2-5300 you can get your hands on. Would be cheaper than buying a Celeron.

Gigabyte boards will usually run on just about any memory.
 
Is it just Ballistix memory you would avoid? I assume other Crucial memory is OK? I've found this for £11.

# Module Size: 1GB
# Package: 240-pin DIMM
# Feature: DDR2 PC2-6400
# Specs: DDR2 PC2-6400 • CL=6 • Unbuffered • NON-ECC • DDR2-800 • 1.8V • 128Meg x 64 •
 
Yeah normal Crucial is great. It's just the chips they make Ballistix from are tripe.
 
i suppose with all this new stuff you need t buy. you could also build yourself a nice little PC for small applications.

i built my dad an 'email pc' for £250 a few weeks ago. mostly stuff bought from here aswell.
 
I have the exact same problem with the brand new GA-EP45-DS4, an E8500 and 2x2GB of Mushkin's XP2-8500 memory. It worked fine for two days of gaming after I assembled it but on the third day the CPU led would flash every 3-4 seconds and it would no longer boot, just like yours.

I did attach a new monitor and change my optical drive before I booted it on that day, but it seems very unlikely that I could have managed to break something while doing that.

I've also tried removing all other components, booting with one memory stick at a time, reseating the CPU twice (I didn't see any broken pins but I don't have the best possible eyesight). Nothing helped.

I'll be following this thread closely and will tell you if I find something out.

Edit: I haven't clocked anything.
 
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I have had many instances of the same problem with my gigabyte board. Wish there was a reliable solution. I would try to ensure it is not just the flaky auto-recovery on the gigbyte board before you go buying other components. In my experience the auto-recovery on them is very dodgy, even if you're not clocking them.

My board when overlocked will refuse to start, fans spin up, spin down permanently, it will never boot up. First board (rma'd) did the exact same thing without even being overclocked.

I literally spent months trawling the internet for solutions and have never found a reliable solution. Switching ram does not work with this problem, I was also told that my ram was faulty, ram is fine, it's the board.

After trying everything suggested and being resigned to the board being dead, I left it overnight last time and the next morning it started up fine. I've noticed a lot of similar posts in the Gigabyte Sticky in the Motherboard thread (without a reliable solution).

Custom PC magazine found the exact same problem with recent Gigabyte boards they tested and said the only way around it they found was hitting Shift + and another key (Ctrl maybe?) during startup?!? It's worth a shot.
 
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