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>> No. 25540 Anonymous
4th September 2016
Sunday 12:52 pm
25540 PC buggered
I need a bit of help here lads.

A week ago my PC halted. Somehow I managed to start it again, losing the /home partition though. The Windows partition worked all right except the networking part. A few days ago I was playing UT. I exited the room for a minute to get myself some tea; when I returned the screen was in standby mode, the fans were whirring. I reset it again. It hanged on the mainboard vendor logo screen.

A few more resets, turning it on and off again. Nothing. When I pressed the power button, the red LED blinked once, the fans started whirring, then nothing.

I tried replacing the PSU. Detaching the video card, memory modules one by one, re-attaching them again. Nothing. No PC speaker signals. It just whirrs.

What shall I do next? It's an old machine, nearly ten years old. If it's the CPU or the mainboard, repairing it is out of question. Is there anything I've missed to check?
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>> No. 25541 Anonymous
4th September 2016
Sunday 2:09 pm
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If you're not getting any POST beeps out of it (and there's a little piezo speaker on-board/a speaker attached to the relevant jumper pins, i.e. you're sure that it can actually beep) then there's something very wrong - probably a knackered motherboard.

Try removing the motherboard battery and powering it up. Try booting it with RAM removed altogether, try reseating the CPU, etc. If you can get beep codes out of it we can work from there.

I don't mean to knock your PC assembling skills, but did you remember to plug in the "P4" connector (4-pin 12V) when you installed the new PSU? It's easy to miss/forget and can cause silent boot failure on some motherboards of that age.

If all else fails, then TBH, given that it's 10 years old, replacing a significant chunk/all of it is the obvious solution, but I'm guessing you're on a tight budget or you'd have done so already. If you let us know how much money you have to put towards this we can make some suggestions, and if you've got the specs of what you've got currently that'd help.
>> No. 25544 Anonymous
4th September 2016
Sunday 6:53 pm
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>>25541
The speaker is probably all right. It beeped okay when I managed to start the machine. When it halted on the logo screen the beep was different - just a wee bit longer than the usual 'everything is okay' beep. Even more interesting, no manual that describes what these beep signals mean has any explanation about such a signal.

> Try removing the motherboard battery and powering it up. Try booting it with RAM removed altogether
Done that. No reaction. It just whirrs at me. No beep codes, the green LED does not light up either. Haven't re-seated the CPU though.

> but did you remember to plug in the "P4" connector (4-pin 12V) when you installed the new PSU?
Sure. It made quite a pleasant click when I put it in.

> then TBH, given that it's 10 years old, replacing a significant chunk/all of it is the obvious solution
The whole of it, I guess. It is Socket 939, DDR1 (not even DDR2), thank dog it had SATA. Laugh at that. Or cry, I don't know. I won't shit you - it was slow but not unbearably slow.

Will try to raise it though. The worst thing has probably already happened. I cannot afford anything half-decent right now that would last another 10 years anyway. Nearly all important data had been backed some time before the incident. I'll miss the Crimsonland savefile.
>> No. 25546 Anonymous
5th September 2016
Monday 12:02 am
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>>25544
That sounds pretty cut and dry. I wouldn't hold out much hope for the CPU reseating fixing it.

Given that it's 939/DDR1 then your best bet is probably a second-hand CPU/MOBO/RAM combo, you can get decent bundles on ebay that'll wipe the floor with what you had and if you get something with DDR3 you should be able to get some appreciable CPU/RAM upgrades when you've got the money (my first pick would be an SSD, mind).

Something like this, maybe: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Intel-socket-1156-motherboard-bundle-Intel-i5-650-CPU-3-2GHZ-4GB-DDR3-Ram-/182257353802
I'll have another look tomorrow to make sure there are no obvious problems with it, or better deals, but I'm off to bed right now.
>> No. 25547 Anonymous
5th September 2016
Monday 5:15 pm
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>>25546
> I wouldn't hold out much hope for the CPU reseating fixing it.
Right. But as someone said, 'You are going to get battered anyway, so why wouldn't you try your chances and fight back?' And I always wanted to be a necromancer anyway.

> then your best bet is probably a second-hand CPU/MOBO/RAM combo
My thoughts exactly although I don't know when will it be. I'm fairly broke at this moment and there are other things on the priority list as well.

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