system will not boot

[thecountryowl]

Any help on this appreciated.

Motherboard - CB60-BX Socket 370

CPU - Celeron 500 mhz

O/S - Windows 98 (upgrade)

Memory - 196 MB SDRAM

Video - Nvidia 64 mb

Sound - Generic sound card.

Modem - US Robotics external 56k Sportster

Problem - My system will not boot. Once turned on, it will not shut off, unless one uses the off/on switch on the power supply at the back.

Symptoms - This started as though it was a processor problem. When I had 2 windows open, (email and iexplorer) the system rebooted, by itself. So, once it booted back up, I made sure there were no memory hogs on the system. That was fine, booted back up, I got back to work, then about 2 minutes later, same deal. Booted back up fine, back to work. When finished, I did not shut it down, and left. I came back the next day, and the screen is black. I try to shut the system down, no dice. I had to use the off/on switch on the back. Boot it back up, nothing, no bios data, absolutely nothing. Black screen. So, I think cheapest solution first, must be the processor. I get another working processor. Same deal. Now I'm thinking power supply, however, the fan works well, all fans in the system work well. Unless the power supply blew a fuse. I put a new fan in it last year, and it has been just fine since.

FWIW, the drive doesn't chatter, nothing works. No lights to the floppy or cd drives. Maybe the moboard is done. I hope not.

I'm at the end of the line on this one. Anyone who has an idea, I'd sure appreciate hearing from you.

Thanks kindly.

Best Regards,

Jim

[mlee97]

can you swap or at least rearange the memory?

It almost sounds like you were overheating it due to the random reboots, and then when you left it on, it may have fried the motherboard. I hope that's not the case.

When you hit the power button, do the fans in the case spin at least?

[thecountryowl]

I changed the memory to different positions, but it made no difference.

The fans all spin, P/supply, video card, and cooling fan.

Just nothing. The random reboot is what made me think processor, but the new processor doesn't fix it.

I'm headed for work, I'll check back later.

Sure do appreciate the help.

Have a nice day folks.

Jim

Do the hard drives spin up? I should've asked before, sorry.

Sounds to me like the motherboard is toast, or like it's shorting out on the case or something similar. A randa-short sounds kind of odd since it worked fine previously. At this point, I'd run with the shot motherboard theory.

Have you tried to get it to boot with minimal hardware? Ie, take all the cards out. Try to boot it with just the CPU and RAM. You should get some angry beeps because it has not video card, but the hard drives should spin up, and the CD-ROM lights should come, I believe.

Next, put the video card in, see if it still boots.

Next the sound card.

Etc, etc until you find out what's causing it to malfunction. Chances are if it won't do anything with just the video card, RAM, and CPU, it's the motherboard. At least in my experience.

Good luck with everything, and welcome to TIMO.

[thecountryowl]

Originally posted by Whir
Do the hard drives spin up? I should've asked before, sorry.

Sounds to me like the motherboard is toast, or like it's shorting out on the case or something similar. A randa-short sounds kind of odd since it worked fine previously. At this point, I'd run with the shot motherboard theory.

Have you tried to get it to boot with minimal hardware? Ie, take all the cards out. Try to boot it with just the CPU and RAM. You should get some angry beeps because it has not video card, but the hard drives should spin up, and the CD-ROM lights should come, I believe.

Next, put the video card in, see if it still boots.

Next the sound card.

Etc, etc until you find out what's causing it to malfunction. Chances are if it won't do anything with just the video card, RAM, and CPU, it's the motherboard. At least in my experience.

Good luck with everything, and welcome to TIMO.

Well, I have tried a new chip and board. The same symptoms appear almost immediately, although very randomly. It will operate at times, for up to 10 minutes or so, then reboot , beep very loudly, not boot up. Very similar to the way my other board started.

So, I have to ask, could it be a power supply that is allowing random spikes of voltage to hit the board? That would be my next guess.

Any help appreciated, thanks,

Jim