Is there anything else to try?

[maureen]

Built a pc for my son about 4 weeks ago.Its been running great for weeks.Tonight he says its crashed and wont do anything.Hes tried to switch it of and switch it on again.Now nothing works,no display.Opened the case disconnected all the drives (floppy,cd +hard).Still no display.Swapped a stick of memory.Still no display.Changed graphic cards.Still no display.Swapped processor to my pc and it works.So does this point to the motherboard?.Is there anything else i can try?.There is an led lights up on the motherboard and the fans kick in but no display.Have i tried everything?
Please help

[EddyH]

stupid question perhaps but did you check the monitor?

[maureen]

Thanks but yes.

[Jeff]

It might be the motherboard. Do you hear any beeps when you turn it on? Clear CMOS(Reset all motherboard settings to default)?

[maureen]

I think it is the motherboard but there is an led thet does light up on the board itself.But ive tried all the other components (cpu,graphics and memory) in another pc and they all run fine.Could the cmos stop me from getting a display with only the basic stuff attached to the board?.

[Faustus]

Does the power supply spin? Could be a power issue. COuld be one even if the powersuppy does spin.

I've been doing TEch support for a very long time, my suggestion to any problem like this is to bypass the surge protector and plug directly into the way. See if it boots like that. If so it may just be your surge protector, if not then its eitehr the PS or the System board.

[EddyH]

Could be something to do with the motherboard then, maybe the BIOS has fritzed out. (Sorry bout the monitor thing, didnt read the post properly)

You say there's a light on the the board itself - is there just one, or a bank of them? My mom recently traded up to a "new" machine (cheap from a friend) and one interesting thing about it is the 4 diagnostic bi-colour LEDs on the motherboard, that can be viewed through the case's cooling slats, instead of resorting to beep codes. By seeing what colour each LED was and referring to the manual, you could diagnose problems without even opening the case, very cool.

Be equally cool if this is the case here. If your motherboard has a set of these lights, or even just one that e.g. blinks or changes colour, and its referenced in the manual, the answer may lie there.

E.g. "only one light is lit - the CMOS has recieved a massive power spike and is frotzed beyond all hope. Sorry, game over, unless you have a spare chip".
"three green and one red - the bios has been locked by an illegal instruction, unplug the power and short the two Reset Bios pins"

so on and so forth.

Another more esoteric one is the video card (if it's PCI) suddenly deciding it doesn't like EG being inserted in slot 2, and will only work in slots 1, 3 and 4 (or vice versa, usually when slot 2 gets in the way of the hard disc cables)... that's always a classic head scratcher.

[Doggiedaddy]

The light on the MoBo in MLTN power in, take the mobo to a local computer shop and have them post it up. They can tell you if it is th MoBo or the processor unit You will need memory and vCard to do a post test. My local shop does not even charge me to do a post testing. Maybe call a local shop.

Dd

[gmatov]

What kind of board? My own Gigabyte haas one green LED on it, and if I can find the book will tell you what it means.
Check your own book, or manual on the CD to see what the LED (S) mean.
I had another board with built in LAN and the LED was for it, no other meaning
Do all the fans run, CPU, case fan, whatever?
As a last resort, can you remove the PS from your case (4 screws, buncha wires ) and try it in your son's machine? If it works, PS is bad. If it doesn't, and yours doesn't either when you put it back, the board is bad, you now need 2 PSs ( Of course, it won't necessarily burn out your PS, but be forewarned that it could.) A decent PS at CompUSA is 40 USD,but of course you are in the UK, and it seems you are overcharged for everything. To me, that is an overcharge as well, as I generally don't pay much more for an entire case, with PS included. (Fancy cases are not my thing.)
I also tell everyone to pull all the drive wires, the reset switch wires and short the reset pins to retrain the PS, as Antec tells you to and as a Tech told me to when I complained about getting a "dead" PS in return for a warranty PS. It started and has been running ever since. It may not apply here, as none of my fans was running, the system was dead, period. For reference though...

[EddyH]

Cases and/or PSUs are about the same price in the UK (30-40 pounds, dollars, whatever). Well, if you get a plain one, and take a short moment to shop around, anyway