Computer will not boot.

[Rare177]

Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe Motherboard

and you added more ram.
a friend of mine had the same problem he added more ram to an asus amd mobo and it shorted out the mobo.the lite still showed up on the mobo, everything sounded like it was working but the mobo was messed.
i think the problem was to do with the ram types being different.

[Waldo2k2]

>>types being different

wow...that shouldn't have made a difference at all, and it definetly shouldn't have shorted it out, he must have done something else wrong....but either way, both of fusion's sticks are 3200.

[VirtualAce]

This might sound stupid but certain IDE cables are not idiot proof in that they are not keyed for you. There is one IDE pin that is blank. Some IDE interfaces also have a notch in them to prevent plugging in backwards...but not all. In fact many do not. Usually when you plug the drives in backwards the computer will turn on and won't beep but it also won't boot or do anything else. It's simply a direct short and your mobo is detecting it. So whether this is the cause of the short or something else is anyone's guess...but ober is right...this is a direct short.

No beeps from the system indicates that absolutely nothing is wrong with the mobo or the CPU. Trust me you would know if something was wrong with the CPU. Often bad CPUs will boot but fail or blue screen windows later. Remember there are about a trillion circuits on a CPU and if just one or two are bad....you may never use those circuits except in certain circumstances. This would cause intermittent failures which is indicative of a CPU problem. A major video card problem would result in system beeps at boot with no picture or a messed up picture - often with ASCII characters. At the very least you would see graphical glitches in your windows screen and video games. When my Voodoo 3 burned out it had multiple color bands in 640x480 mode - all color depths. Obviously one of the memory banks failed. These problems are usually very easy to detect and give plenty of warning prior to failing. Also if it is a hard drive issue they will often create many bad sectors and failed boots prior to completely failing. You would have many files that were screwed up for no reason and/or programs terminating with odd errors - defrags that failed, chkdsks that crashed, etc., etc. Drives also do not usually fail and just completely stop working.....i said usually - there are always exceptions in electronics.

But if the green light is on check to see if the hard drives spin up prior to POST. My bet is they are not spinning up at all which indicates there is a short somewhere between drive and board. Drives can short out but this is rare and I can't see anything that you did that would cause this. Boards can short out...but again the same thing. Power supplies are very unreliable beasties but normally when they are about to die they often cause your system to reboot randomly prior to failing - this is a result of the voltage dropping drastically thus causing your mobo to reset completely. Not often do they fail w/o some warning signs first. This is because when they fail it is usually due to the analytic capacitors failing to hold charge or because of an overheated component - ie: the step-down transformer windings being burned out - but failing immediately is usually not a symptom of a power supply problem. My guess is that it is a simple connection somewhere in the system. Do not mod these power supplies as any incorrect mods can and will result in major CPU and/or component damage and at the very worst could cause a fire in your computer. Not a good idea. They are only like 50 bucks....if it fails get a new one...unless its just the fan that failed and you caught it in time.

Check all your 4 pin power cables and make sure they are seated correctly in the drives. At worst you could go out and purchase all new ones since they are very inexpensive. However they often do fail to connect to one another correctly and because they are so cheaply built often fail and cause short circuits. You probably had this short circuit in your system prior to moving it...but it did not appear until you jiggled the components around and/or removed them and replaced them. Unfortunately that is how short circuits act....they are extremely intermittent. But when they occur, unless you jiggle the source of the short circuit the circuit will continue to fail possibly leading you to think it is another problem. Start with the cheap simple stupid stuff first as this is usually what is wrong.

Check the positioning of all your power cables and make sure they are all seated tightly and that all pins are connecting to one another -> connector to connector connections are often the culprits of short circuits. Look for wires that may come out of their plastic connector entirely. If you find these...discard the power cable and get a new one. They are only held in there by a metal tab that sticks up on the connector that is crimped to the wire. This tab lays flat against the plastic which keeps the wire from moving in and out of the connector. They often break and fail. Then when you connect another connector to this or a component...that one wire is pushed back ever so slightly and barely or not at all making contact.

That's my two cents. If you fail to diagnose the problem you will fool yourself into thinking this is an expensive problem...when it might not be. Keep it simple stupid.

[ober]

..but ober is right...this is a direct short.

That's pretty cool... getting credit for a thread I didn't even participate in.

[Waldo2k2]

you were there in spirit...or maybe you just inspired him ::shrugs::

[VirtualAce]

ooops hahahahahaha............!!!!!!!!

There are 2 threads about this issue and I know you usually participate in them. Maybe it was Waldo2k2. I dunno. Posting early in the morning is probably a bad practice.

But....it is kinda funny.



::embarrassed::

[RealityFusion]

Sorry I have not posted in a while, my internet connection was down.

I have disconnnected EVERYTHING, power supply connectors and all motherboard connections, and reconnected them. I then double checked all the connections to the motherboard and still I get no bootup. The hard drives do sound like they are spinning prior to post. After a few rotations they stop and I just get stuck on a black screen. I really think it is my motherboard but I would like to point my finger at the processor. All the signs are pointing toward the mobo or CPU. I will probably just get a new mobo and CPU to spare me the trouble of getting one or the other part and it still not work.

EDIT: I just read a different post by jrahhali. Ober said that if the heatsink does not have thermal past then the cpu may overheat. When I got my computer, I didn't use any thermal past at all. But it ran fine for 6 months strong. Should I try using some thermal past before I go out and buy an new mobo/cpu?

[Waldo2k2]

so you built your computer...and you didn't use thermal paste??

wow....you deserve to have to buy a new proc...

(btw, if you bought a computer already built by someone like dell, etc. then it has thermal paste or tape already on the heatsink and you'd be fine in that respect)

[VirtualAce]

Where oh where do you people come from? CPU with no thermal paste? Holy crap man why don't you just run your car without oil? It's about the same thing.

Now I see why DELL and Compaq's exist.

[RealityFusion]

Since it was my first pc that I built I really don't see it as a major screw up, rather a minor setback(part of the learning process). Anyhow, since I am sure it is the processor, I am just going to go ahead and upgrade my mobo and my cpu.

My next question has to do with the Athlon64 CPU's. I am looking at two of them now. One of them has 512MB L2 Cache and a 1GB L2 Cache. What is the difference and what does that mean?

P.S. We come from Texas and I have blown my car engine by running it with no oil before too. But that wasn't from stupidity, just laziness

[Waldo2k2]

It's 512KB and 1MB, not a GB, damn.

Basically it's how much code it can store in a prefetch of sorts before it gets executed, basically, it's like the size of the hose filling your swimming pool. If you have a gigantic pool, a hose that's only an inch in diameter isn't going to fill it very fast. Now, lets say you have a hose that's 512 inches in diameter and shoots water out at 1600 psi, that's going to fill your pool pretty quickly. The 1mb cache is just going to be a bigger hose is all, the question is, is your pool really going to drain that quickly that you need a 1000 inch hose?

And btw, frying a processor becuase you didn't research on the basics of building a computer is not a minor setback, a computer should last for years without trouble if you built it yourself.