[aptalca]

I am using a 7 year old desktop as a secondary htpc in my guestroom as a "workout companion". In other words, I play P90X and work out, or play tv shows while I am on the bike.

Unfortunately, it just died, while I was upgrading the ram. I am trying to troubleshoot and would appreciate all ideas.

The machine has an Athlon 64 cpu, (had) 2 sticks of 512MB ram, tried to upgrade to 2 sticks of 1GB ram, ECS mobo, 3 sata hard drives and a GT520.

I replaced the ram, and the computer would not turn on. Pressed the power button and absolutely nothing.

Here's what I tried so far:

1) Put the old ram back in. With two sticks, nothing.

2) Put in one of the old sticks, after a few tries, it started once, but then I manually shut it off. Then I put in the second stick, nothing. After a few dozen tries, it happened to start again, but right when I was unplugging it. (Since then I tried hundreds more times, and nothing)

3) Plugged in a usb hub and it lights up, so usb ports have power.

4) Checked the power button connections, they seem to be still connected, might need to test it more thoroughly.

5) Plugged in a different cpu fan, nothing.

6) Unplugged all the harddrives, and such, nothing.

7) Took out the cmos battery and tried again, nothing.

8) I do not have a spare psu, and taking one out from another computer is too much of a pain.


Can anyone recommend any other tests to figure out what the problem could be?

Could the psu be faulty even though it still supplies power to the usb ports?

What is an easy way to emulate the power button to check if that is faulty? Just connect the two power cables together??

Thanks

[artrafael]

Something on the motherboard may have shorted out when you replaced the RAM initially. Did you unplug the AC (mains) power cord before working inside the computer? Could also have been due to electrostatic discharge? It's also possible that some component on the motherboard burned out due to age and that it happened coincidentally with your upgrade. Or the mere act of replacing the RAM stressed the motherboard just enough to cause a conductive trace to break or a solder joint to work loose. I've had several motherboards on various systems die on me over the years, not due to any abuse, but simply due to component failure, such as the infamous exploding capacitors "scandal" from a few years back.

Most likely, you'll need a new motherboard. Do you have another system that supports the same type of RAM? If so, you can try them out on the other system to be sure the RAM wasn't damage as well. Testing the CPU could be trickier unless you also have another system that supports the same type of processor. It may be less expensive and hassle to simply buy a motherboard/CPU combo and drop that in.

Just in case it's not a hardware problem, you could try removing the CMOS battery on the motherboard, waiting a few minutes and then re-inserting the battery. This probably won't do any good, but it's a free and easy test and eliminates one more variable.

[aptalca]

Thanks for the reply.

I did try the cmos removal, didn't do anything.

Unfortunately the board is very old, and the ram is ddr 400. I don't have another machine (compatible) to test the ram or cpu in.

I did unplug the machine before I replaced the ram, but electrostatic might have caused an issue.

I also thought of a component on the mobo frying, but the fact that it *did* start a couple of times since the issue started happening, I am confused as the issue is intermittent. If something fried, I wouldn't expect it to start at all, but I am not sure.


Thanks

[artrafael]

The fact that it did boot up a couple of times out of many attempts is a pretty good sign that the problem is with the hardware rather than some incorrect BIOS/OS setting (in which case it should always fail if the settings were the same with every boot). I had a motherboard get progressively worse: from infrequent system lock-ups to intermittent boot failures to mostly boot failures to 100% boot failures.

I wouldn't put up with (nor trust) a system that would only boot-up X out of Y attempts. It's not worth it. There are some pretty good deals on motherboard/CPU combination packages.

[aptalca]

Yeah you're right.

I am certainly not gonna put any more money into this thing. I'll send the new ram back to amazon.

But hey, everything happens for a reason. Since this computer was also the print server, now my wife has to walk up to the second floor and plug her laptop to the printer every time she needs to print.

Let's just say that this situation made it a lot easier for me to convince her that I need to build one of these:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=132650
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=132688.

[Mick1152]

That's exactly what I do whenever I want a new computer, break it. Wife can't live without the computer so she tells me to get a new one, STAT! As you wish, my dear!