Here is a curly one...

Since novemember 07 my PC has been running perfectly.

About an hour ago it froze, and when reset behaves very strangly.

I believe it is a m/b problem, but will trouble shoot more tomorrow, and would appreciate some feed back.


Intel DP35DP m/b
XFX 8800GT graphics card
4 x 1GB Corsair 800mhz RAM
800W gigabyte p/s
4 x SATA drives, 1 80GB, 1 320GB 2 500GB, mix of seagate and Westerdigital. (seagate drives date from before current recall issues).


When plugged into power, and switched on at the p/s, the fans spin up for 2sec and the power light comes on, then system shuts down for 5sec, and spins up again. This cycles continously.

I have tried a different power supply and it does the same thing.

Disconnecting the power and reset switches has no effect.
Pressing them when system is powered and cycling has no effect.
Disconnecting main boot drive has no effect.

I plan to try the CPU in this PC tomorrow, and will try system with out any ram, but as system never boots, so does not interact with these parts I doubt it will have any effect.


The system intially froze while I was not using it, and the problem presented itself when I hard reset it using the reset button.


I had just set up a new 21inch Dell CRT, and this had been running for several hours. I do not believe this is related to the problem.


I had also plugged in a JVC digital video camera fia Firewire, this was undetected by the system when turned on or off, and I had disconnected it.
When I went to use the system it had frozzen (possibly when the camera was unplugged).

I am wondering if there was a fault on the board, that has only shown up by using the firewire port? (if that is possible or makes any sense).


I'll test RAM, CPU and HDD on this system tomorrow.

I'm rather glad I recently did a back up of my photos

I had a similar issue a couple of weeks ago after giving the internals a clean which included taking the heat-sink off.

I though I had re-seated it correctly but it was not and the CPU internal thermal protection shut it of after about 5 seconds, any possibility that the CPU fan not working??

Just thinking out loud as I don't really know a thing about them

Yeah, I thought about that, but i havn't touched anythnig inside since I built it.

The thing that gets me is it tries to power on (or at least powers the fan for a few seconds) without touching the power switch. It even does it with the power switch disconnected.
As long as there is power at the power supply (and it does it with two different power supplies, one i know is good because i am using it right now), it powers the fans on and off, but never reachs post, and never even outputs anything to the monitor.

Got me stumped (but we all knew that wasn't going to be too difficult)

Cheers Mark.

I'll give Sara the camera so she can get the video off

Update

I have tried a different CMOS batter to no effect.
Also tried disconnecting the case mounted firewire port incase it was causing a short, no change.

All the fans spin up, but it is only for a fraction of a second, then they power down, and the process starts again. No beeps from m/b either.

Further update:

Stripped the board of everything but the CPU and CPU fan.

It still does the same thing.

Although with hard drives plugged into PSU, but not into board, they also cycle up and down with the fan.
I am wondering if this is because the board is cycling power on and off from the PSU?

sounds like a board failure maybe when disconnecting the camera you shorted the it.. i am guessing that by the fact it never registered the camera you just hot swapped the cable.

if it was ram or the cpu - you would get the board beeps. however just because the board has gone does not mean the rest have not been fried too.

Nzshrimper wrote in post #7125276
sounds like a board failure maybe when disconnecting the camera you shorted the it.. i am guessing that by the fact it never registered the camera you just hot swapped the cable.

if it was ram or the cpu - you would get the board beeps. however just because the board has gone does not mean the rest have not been fried too.

That is what I was worried about.

I have built Amanda a Q8200 based computer, so it is compatiable with my RAM etc.
If they are also fried, and try them in this computer, is there any chance of damaging it?

I am hoping to just replace the board, otherwise it will have to become an insurance claim, which will take like such things do, far to long.

Moppie wrote in post #7123604
The thing that gets me is it tries to power on (or at least powers the fan for a few seconds) without touching the power switch. It even does it with the power switch disconnected.
As long as there is power at the power supply (and it does it with two different power supplies, one i know is good because i am using it right now), it powers the fans on and off, but never reachs post, and never even outputs anything to the monitor.

there's your main clue - PSU switching on is controlled by the board not the other way around.

As far as M/B faults being caused by firewire connection, it's entirely possible - I've seen gear fail just by plugging in a USB device (you'd think they would have suffice protection)
Another question, does your shiny new monitor have a jug-cord mains plug, or does it have an external PSU? I've seen some funny things happen when earths aren't as grounded as they should be...

The new monitor has its own PSU, so it is only connected to the PC via the VGA cable.


I had a good chat with chris, and it sounds like when I hot swapped the video camera it has caused a short in the board. This may have been a preexisting fault, that has only surfaced after using the firewire port for the first time.


I'm testing RAM, HDD and CPU in this PC now, to check is they were also effected.

You're welcome to try your q6600 on my new board, to check that works (i'm currently running completely stock clocking on my q6600). If it fries the board, well mine's under warranty

Cheers mate, I'm going to try it on this board shortly (just copying some stuff off the other HDD), after I have tried the RAM.

I just found the box for the blown board, and it has a 3 year warrenty

Moppie wrote in post #7126981
I just found the box for the blown board, and it has a 3 year warrenty

sweet.. off to the shop with you..

Rams good, just have to check the CPU, then hopefully off to the shop

CPU is good, off to the shop I go.