Posted: 4/2/2006 10:05:35 AM EDT
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I came home last night and my clocks were flashing, indicating a power surge/outtage. My pc is plugged into an uniterrupted power supply/battery backup/surge protector (UPS). The UPS includes software that shuts the pc down 5 minutes after the power goes out. This software has worked great in previous times that the power has gone out. When I go to turn my pc back on, it has power but won't boot. I can hear the harddrives start spinning. There is no sign that the pc even begins to boot. No beep, no nothing. Did the motherboard get fried? If so, how would that happen with the UPS? Any ideas? Thanks a lot. |
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If your not getting any beeps chances are its your motherboard. The first thing I do is start pulling stuff, unplug everything from the mother board except your video card 1 and 1 stick of memory and try it again, if you get a beep then its something you unpluged, just a process of elimation. If no beep, swap out the memory, and if you've got an extra video card handy swap that out too. Still no POST then its the board. ETA Or the CPU |
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I'm gonna have to concur with Iroc. During the boot up process the Motherboard gose through some self testing and then beeps a serise of beeps if there is a problem. Generaly one beep means all is OK and any more than that means that something is wrong. Having no beeps means that the Main board is not even able to run the tests. Perhaps its time for a warrenty replacement? -JIM- |
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No disagreement with the above posters, but I like to try the simple stuff first. Unplug the PC from the UPS or where it is plugged in now. Wait five minutes. Plug it in the wall outlet and try again. Have any friends (in your area...not cyber) that are into pc's or gamers? They may have a spare power supply like yours that could be tried. Many UPS units do not have good surge protection. In addition, the cable that is used to do the auto shut down (RS232 or USB) gives another path of destruction to the PC if there is a good hit on the power line. ETA: Didn't your area have some severe storms? |
Ugh. That sounds fun.  It is probably the best method for isolating the problem though. And since if it is the motherboard, all that stuff has to come off anyway. Guess I will get started on that. 
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Unplug the ac cord pull bios battery from board and wait 5-10 min. reinstall bios battery plug in AC and see if it boots. i have had MANY pc's that scrambled their brains when power drops. Depending on the type of power hit your UPS may or may not have kicked in and kept it up. Manytimes you may get low voltage condition below the pc's threshhold but above the UPS threshold in time or voltage. when this occurs you usually get a spike followed by an immediate low voltage and back to normal voltage in a split second. the UPS does not react fast enough and it scrambles the pc logic until ALL voltage is reset. mike |
Quite true, there are vectors other than the power. Do you have an unprotected phone line into it? Motherboard sound like the problem part here. A bad power supply would cause different problems most likely and the drives would not spin up. I assume the fans are spinning as well (especially look at the CPU fan)? CMOS battery reset could possibly yield some results as well. |
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the above posts about the beep codes are correct on a working bios. If the logic is "scrambled" due to a voltage issue this is not occur. if my above suggestion does not work, follow the minimum config advise posted by others. the easiest thing to do is remove ALL componets to include video and memmory. power on and you should get a memmory fault beep code. Install one component at a time after that until it fails again. |
I tried pulling out all of the components down to just the video card and one stick of RAM. It still did not run. So far my solution has been to order a new motherboard, but after reading TBS's posts about pulling the BIOS battery, I am wondering if that might have been a rash decision. I am going to try to pull the BIOS battery, put the machine back together, and see if that works. Guess I will have to do that tonight so that I can cancel the order for the new motherboard just in case it works. I will keep you guys updated if you want. |
I took the battery out for a while, then hooked the board back up to the power supply. Only the processor is installed. No beeps when powered on. I am going to out some memory in it and put the harddrives in as well to see if it will boot, but I am not optimistic at this point. |
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if you get no beeps with the speaker connected and just the processor and system board you have 1 of 3 issues system board processor power supply. my reccomendation is replace all 3. frequently when a board or processor fails it takes the other with it. Power supplies are cheap. insure you are getting good power before ordering a board and processor. use a multimeter and check the connector. mike |
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The new PC's have 2 on off switches, 1 that you can see and touch, and 1 that is command driven. In cases like this, resetting the command driven switch is simply opening the PC, pulling the power supply connector from the main board, plugging it back in, and your done. I hope you haven't disected your entire PC before this. It's a common problem. ETA: I now see your way past this - but for others out there this is how to fix most of the "won't start after a power event" issues. Good luck. |
I used to have a friend who lived in a trailer with wiring courtesy of the landlord and his halfwit sons. Every time two things came on at the same time like washer and friDge or AC and garbage disposal the resulting brownout would hork up his computer. |
My gut tells me it's probably not the battery, but besides just pulling the battery out there is usually a jumper you have to move to short a circuit and clear the BIOS information. That's done when the battery is in. You can find out which jumper it is in the manual for the motherboard if you have it. |
as i read it it he had power, it wouldn't boot or post |
Did you shoot it? Some computers don't work well if they get shot. ETA: Just saw the text and no picture before I replied. |