Hit power button.

Computer fan and lights rev up, immediately goes back down and goes off. Over and over.

I am told its Motherboard or CPU. Checked and its not power supply.

So, I cant use my old CPU, Motherboard, or RAM. Because if I replace 1 of the 3 I have to replace the other two. So here is what I got. BEGIN FLAMING.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103291

AMD Phenom 9950 2.6GHz Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core Black Edition Processor





http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130136

MSI K9A2 Platinum AM2+/AM2 AMD 790FX ATX AMD Motherboard





http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820104060

Kingston HyperX 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory

1/4/2009 11:38:43 AM

CPU could be overheating. I had something similar happen and this was the cause. Is the heat sink set properly?

1/4/2009 11:55:16 AM

yes

1/4/2009 12:17:15 PM

Did you make sure the auxiliary power connector is seated properly?

Did you make sure to use the spacers when you mounted the motherboard to the case?

Did you make sure no screws or anything other metal has fallen on or below the mobo?

I'd spay it's probably not the RAM because that normally will at least beep an error code. It's probably not the CPU overheating, because it'll at least get a little farther in the boot process before shutting down (that's been by experience with Intel at least).

I'd make sure though the processor is seated properly, and there's no bent pins or anything like that.

1/4/2009 1:12:51 PM

Oddly enough, my machine doesn't seem to post as of an hour or so ago. Wife was using the machine one minute, I walked into the room 5-10 minutes later and it was off. Hit the power button and I get no beeping or churning of any HDDs. I removed 2 of the memory sticks, removed all but one HDD, removed the DVD drive, removed a PCI USB card, and still no beeping or churning of the HDDs, nothing on the screen. I used a multi meter and I have +5 and +12, but I'm about to probe the big power connector to the motherboard and see if I find -5 and 5sb. The mobo has been flaky in the past few weeks where sometimes it won't shut down when I power down Windows and it won't respond to holding the power switch (though it is doing that today).

Having said that, I'm looking to get a new mobo and cpu (I have the DDR2 modules I'll need already). I don't game, looking to spend in the ~$200 range, will spend less or more if the long term value is worth it. Any suggestions? Should I look at anything more than AMD X2s for my purposes, do I need to even bother looking at Core2s?

1/4/2009 1:35:26 PM

Quick question. What would be the easiest way to snag data off the old C: before dropping the hard drive on the new mobo/cpu and re-installing the OS? It isn't possible to reinstall the OS on the old HDD (over top of the old install) and have all the old programs and My Documents stay intact, right? I'd say that would be the most annoying thing about modern PCs that I'm disappointed hasn't been addressed yet. The ability to put the old disk in with new hardware and not need a new OS install.

1/4/2009 2:24:15 PM

^Anymore today you should have a secondary hard drive for this reason and others.

1/4/2009 2:48:43 PM

I have a secondary drive but never took the time to set up auto backups to this disk. I've done it manually off and on. I also partition my OS disk so I can use the other partition for storage as well. I'll most likely get an external enclosure and transfer stuff over and reformat the OS partition. The question still stands, is it possible to just boot to the XP cd and re-install the OS over top of the old and have all the old programs work? The new OS install needs all the drivers and such for the new hardware, but it seems like the older programs would continue to work, I can imagine it will clobber My Documents, but maybe there is an option at install time? Basically, I'm just looking for least effort here to get back up and running.

1/4/2009 3:17:13 PM

get this ram instead while there's a $30 rebate on it:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227267

1/4/2009 3:23:21 PM

Quote :

"It isn't possible to reinstall the OS on the old HDD (over top of the old install) and have all the old programs and My Documents stay intact, right?"

programs, no.. my documents, kind of. it moves them to a different folder but does not delete them. then you can just cut/paste them over to the right place and everything is just like you left it.

i'd back it up first though--not worth losing everything.

1/4/2009 3:49:56 PM

this thread did not deliver

1/4/2009 3:55:49 PM

I took everything completely out of the computer. Literally, even the motherboard off the case. Tightened the grounding screws back on the board.
I removed the processor from the board, reapplied thermal grease. Screwed the board back down, put the processor back in, put the heatsink back on.

Powered it on, and got nothing. It should've beeped angrily at me because there were no ram or video cards present. It would crank up for a quick second and die. If you kept pressing the power button, it wouldnt even crank anymore. I had to unplug the power supply, remove the BIOS battery, put it back in, then plug it back up and it would crank 1 time.

I plugged in a case fan for shits and giggles, and that allowed the fans to stay running when I pressed the power button, but still no beeps. No idea why it stayed powered on... but with JUST the processor plugged in, and still nothing-- I assumed either the board and/or processor was shot.

- BEUs Lady

1/4/2009 5:09:42 PM

exact same thing happened to me when i built a pc a while ago. turned out that i had screwed the mobo in too tight and the steel case was shorting out the mobo

clear CMOS jumper perhaps?

[Edited on January 4, 2009 at 5:25 PM. Reason : edit]

1/4/2009 5:24:24 PM

OH IM BACK BABY!111

LETS GET THIS SHIT STARTED

1/8/2009 10:04:12 PM

I got my stuff in today. First, I wanted to drop my drives in external storage and copy the most important stuff off them onto this laptop before I go installing new stuff. And I'm having some issues.

I can see the disk through Computer Management, but it lists it as Dynamic/Foreign and want let me do anything with it until I format it. Is it at all possible to take an Internal drive and drop it in an external usb enclosure and get at the data without having to format it first?

1/9/2009 10:16:17 AM

it's possible, but you shouldn't have to

any other options besides format?

right click my computer, manage, disk management.. find the drive, right click..is there activate or something like that? i can't remember, it's been a while..but sometimes I've had to go in there and mess around with it

putting it in external enclosure is possible too. how was it originally configured in the other computer??

[Edited on January 9, 2009 at 10:35 AM. Reason : asdf]

1/9/2009 10:35:02 AM

Ok, weird. The first drive I tried was a 500gb drive I was using as a backup (mostly for FLAC/MP3/Movie). I thought it was the one containing my C:. I'm not sure how that drive was formatted. I tried my other drive, a 750gb one and it is readable assigning C (OS) and D (flac/mp3) to new drive letters and I'm in the process of getting everything I needed off of it.

Quote :

"putting it in external enclosure is possible too. how was it originally configured in the other computer??"

That is what I have done. I had two physical disks in my desktop. A 750gb drive partitioned for OS and then a large portion for media. Also, there is a physical 500gb drive that the 750gb replaced, I'm pretty sure I had this drive as a single partition and was using it as a backup for the media partition from the 750gb drive. I dropped both of them into an external enclosure so I could get all the stuff off the OS partition (stuff I was saving in My Documents) and for some reason It wouldn't recognize the 500gb data. It could detect the drive just fine, but not the size or anything like that.

[Edited on January 9, 2009 at 10:46 AM. Reason : .]

1/9/2009 10:44:17 AM

Ummm....so I dropped the new motherboard/cpu/memory in and hooked everything else up as it was. Turned he machine on and it boots into XP. I installed the drivers for my board, rebooted, and ran Sandra benchmarks that line up almost exactly with the ones referenced for my CPU. I thought this generally wasn't possible - yet?

1/10/2009 10:29:07 PM