Lahurah has the very pretty Wings of the Goddess PC she won in the ZAM pumpkin carving contest a few years back. I am her live-in tech support, but I'm scratching my head on this one.
She was playing FFXI and her computer shut down out of the blue. It then refused to reboot. My first guess was overheating, but usually in that case it'll boot back up after it cools off. All fans are running - we tested.
Once we push the power button, the lights come on and the fans run, but computer doesn't even seem to get to POST. The BIOS does not load.
Curious about why we're not getting POST beeps, I pulled out all the RAM. Nothing. It's not going to POST at all.
We pulled out the CMOS battery and reseated it, and it booted again, but then it died again shortly and once again, won't boot. So I'm sending Lahurah out to get the CMOS battery tested and possibly replaced. That shouldn't affect its ability to POST and boot up, though.
The next steps we are going to take is dissecting the system and reseating everything, including the CPU. Thankfully I've got some thermal paste lying around...
Most of the parts in her system are about 2.5 years old now. We replaced the PSU a few months ago, and she added more RAM. The motherboard is an ASUS M278N, which is no longer manufactured, but I think we can just get any AM2+ motherboard that uses her same RAM and be okay. I'd rather not replace the motherboard if that's not the issue, but I have a feeling that it is.
What could be preventing a system from even reaching POST? What other things should I test before she drops $50 on a replacement motherboard?
Edit: Turns out the motherboard is under warrenty until May, so we can RMA it if necessary. We've pulled out everything and reseated it - the thermal paste was pretty loose, so if it was a CPU overheating issue, this should fix it. She's off to a party now so I'm waiting til she comes back before we continue testing. We also dusted everything out so the interior is in good shape.
Now if she would only let me put Windows 7 on it.
Edited, Feb 26th 2011 3:26pm by catwho