Bad luck ^ 2

[Petr Schreiber]

Dear friends,

my one year old PC has burned/damaged mainboard, it does not even draw text or boot.
I had prepaired TBGL update, thought of finishing it tonight and publishing tommorrow, but it is impossible now. Mainboard is still in warranty period, I hope it won't take long... but it stil makes me angry. Not sure about condition of HDDs.

I am writing this from other PC at home ( but I am not able to install, work here ).

Hope you won't have as bad luck as me today
( backup, backup, backup on external media! )


Petr

[matthew]

I used to backup all my documents to DVD every month but it got a bit tedious after a while. Nowadays if I write a program or something similar, I upload it to my Wikispace or Website.

[ErosOlmi]

Sorry Petr. Damn. Anyhow if it is your motherboard your HD data should be safe

Yes, backup, backup, backup.
I backup my data almost every day. Maybe too much :)
At work we backup main live DB and important servers every 6 hours on parallel servers and at night on tapes.
Always backup, backup, backup.

[Charles Pegge]

Hi Petr,

I know what it feels like - your digital world suddenly disappears into a black hole. Since my DVD started creating corrupt backups - without any hint of error, I switched to memory sticks - they are useable for at least 50,000 rewrites, and backing up current project files takes about 5 seconds. - never need to use disks again.

[Michael Clease]

Petr are you sure its just the motherboard and not the cpu thats killed the motherboard?

I had that situation about 2 years ago and just changed the cpu and motherboard to something more upto date for about £100 for the pair seemed like a good investment. In the last year my HDD died as well but putting it my fridge fixed it long enough to retreive the data (apart from my TBGF i was working on) but I will try again now I am thinking about it.

[Michael Hartlef]

Ouch, that's bad. I hope you will get it fixed soon.

[ISAWHIM]

Would you like a donation to help get you up and running again?

I'll consider it a contribution towards the TBGL, and all it has offered me.

Just PM me with a pay-pal recipient, or I can give it to Eros, to pass on to you.

(Might want to have the power supply load-tested. When they start to go bad, they drop low voltages and that causes amps to run high, blowing chips. Any idea what part has blown? Usually the memory controller hub goes first, since that is the most active and demanding. ASUS boards are notorious for blowing them. They have undersized heat-sinks, or none, and they are in the dust-collect path of the main CPU airway.)

Any-who... Just say the word...

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi all,

the situation gets more odd - I was able to boot my PC once more to Windows, and after restart ... it again does not react since then.

I used SiSoft Sandra to produce report ( no failures found ).
I tried to install Motherboard Monitor then, it needed restart and since then I am just turning it on and off and getting nothing.
Everything worked, disks ok, graphic card ok, memory reported ok... mystery.
Powersupply is relatively new, about 2 years old now, works well.

It is like 1 in 50 boot attempts results in success.
The unsuccessfull boot looks like fans are working, hard disk is read for ~10seconds, no reaction on keyboard Control/Alt/Del or power button ( restart button works ).

Motherboard has 3 years warranty, so I should be able to get new for no price.

Thanks for all the advices, will use memory sticks as Charles suggested.

Jason, thanks a lot for very kind offer, but I still have some emergency cash for such a cases :) My motherboard is ASUS, it has "Rock solid-Heart touching" on box. I am not sure about rock solidness now, but if heart attack equals heart touching, they almost made it.

If it is motherboard/processor/memory ... it should be all still under warranty.
I am just blocked from "my digital world" as was said.


Petr

[ISAWHIM]

Well, then I will give it to Eros. It is the money that I make from IMVU, selling 3D virtual goods. (Usually I just use it to pay for my internet stuff, like my websites, so it is play money to me. That reminds me... I have to make more junk to sell.)

Try the power-supply...

Sounds like it could also be the bios battery, if it is not latching the P.O.S.T... After P.O.S.T, it attempts to boot. I had a faulty battery that was actually resetting all my bios settings. Preventing booting, until the air-battery had generated enough voltage to hold the reset settings. Fresh batteries last for 10+ years. The ones they use, last about 2-5 years. (Stupid air-battery. Don't know why they have not switched to a rechargeable yet.)

But the Ctrl/Alt/Del, and POWER button, suggest it is also the power supply.

Does holding the power button in for 4 seconds kill it? (That is the forceful-off mode.)

NOTE: I like ASUS... but I have not had one without problems. I like to think they have a personality, not a problem. LOL. That is the price you pay for speed. I'll still take an ASUS over most other motherboards.

[Michael Clease]

Petr when I am fault finding PCs at work I tend to unplug everything (cables also) just power,speaker and button still connected and work back until its faulty again.

The Ctrl/Alt/Del just suggests that system isnt running (an bus error or a chip select line down, its a bit unknown) and as Jason said the motherboards are soft start so they are running all the time (look for the LED on your bourd) and shorting pin 14 to ground for a second should flip the bistable in the switchmode into life. And yes you can walk upto any computer with an ATX PSU and hold the Power button for 5 Seconds and it will switch off.

here are some beep codes to play with (remember to leave the internal speaker plugged in :D )
http://www.bioscentral.com/beepcodes/awardbeep.htm

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi,

I booted up my PC for first time today, after numerous failed tries.
Thanks for the tip with long hold of power button, will try.

At least I could backup :)

Good idea with the beeps!
Fact is, when my PC boots correctly, it beeps once (!), that is situation how it works since it was new.

In case it fails to start, it does not make any sound on beeper.

I tried to unplug everything, but it did not helped in this case - as I have even graphic and sound card integrated, I could only try to remove keyboard/mouse/speakers, which are things not making much of difference I guess.


Thanks,
Petr

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi guys,

I almost forgot to say it was motherboard issue, I have new one, worked now on TBGL and Journal for some time :)
I also bought GeForce 9500GT to celebrate return of PC.

The performance of new card is spectacular, but I can still change GPU used in BIOS, so do not worry I would leave out optimizing slow beasts.

My card is Zotac GeForce 9500GT, 512 DDR3 with huge passive heatsink so it does not make any noise.
I have it second day, so it is early for recommendations, but so far it exceeded my expectations in all areas.


Petr

[Michael Clease]

Good
I should have a new test unit in a few weeks, my new work computer is going to be a quad core 2.33 or 2.66 with FireGL 5200 (i think) so that should interesting on benchmarks.

[Petr Schreiber]

That will be killer machine - and good to have strong ATi for tests as well.

Petr