Machine not booting

Royal Fleet · 10 Mar 2008 at 08:34

I built a new PC at the end of last year. Worked fine to start with. It then started to develop a boot issue. The system would come on (insofar as the fans would start up, and the optical drive would spin) but the machine would not boot. Pressing the reset button 2-3 times would eventually get it to boot. Once booted there was no issue at all. The machine would run fine, and it would sleep etc as well.

The problem is now terminal though as a MS patch induced reboot and it will now not start at all.

There is no POST beep which would lead me to think the problem is MOBO related.

I do not think it is PSU as it runs fine once booted.
I have swapped in and out the memory sticks in and out and they are fine.
Video card error would get a Bios beep at least.

Is there anything else it could be (CPU fault?) before I raise an RMA

Bonjour · 10 Mar 2008 at 08:53

If the CPU were at fault, then there would also likely be no beep at post.

bluestreak101 · 10 Mar 2008 at 08:59

Take the whole lot to pieces and turn just the motherboard on by itself with no CPU RAM or anything and see if it beeps, then slowly build up the pieces, if you get nothing at all straight away I would be more inclined to think the motherboard was at fault.

Royal Fleet · 10 Mar 2008 at 13:04

Thanks for the help.

So just to clarify, if I plug in the Mobo to the PSU, and nothing else, it should still give a positive POST beep, even without a CPU in it?

Silverwolf · 10 Mar 2008 at 13:20

As Bluestreak says, it will beep without a CPU.

Next I would try a diff PSU, you would be surprised at the number of oldish PSUs fail. I have had your problem, bought new PSU and Bingo it works.

Also your manual should tell you what the beeps mean. Provided it beeps, of course.

Royal Fleet · 10 Mar 2008 at 14:26

Silverwolf said:
As Bluestreak says, it will beep without a CPU.

Next I would try a diff PSU, you would be surprised at the number of oldish PSUs fail. I have had your problem, bought new PSU and Bingo it works.

Also your manual should tell you what the beeps mean. Provided it beeps, of course.

I did consider PSU, but discounted this as when it did boot it would run for days under heavy usage without issue.

Thanks for the help. I will test tomorrow evening.

Bonjour · 10 Mar 2008 at 14:34

I have worked on motherboards that don't beep when there's no CPU (or a faulty CPU) present.

iraiguana · 10 Mar 2008 at 19:33

Read the manual as should state when it beeps with failed parts. So you can tell if cpu or mobo.

Then do as stated above and slowly add parts until it fails. Otherwise it can be ram issues which I have seen do this type of thing.