Motherboards keep failing? - refuses to post and no video

[gaz147]

I built my own computer and all worked fine for nine months. Then suddenly my computer failed to post and I had no video. I messed around moving memory chips and removing components and resetting the CMOS. Eventually it started working again but I had to limit the processor bus speed to 133mhz (It's an Athlon XP3000+ so should be set to 166mhz).

After a couple of days it failed again and screen just said BIOS Checksum error. I read on the internet that the ASUS A7N8X-X motherboard is prone to this so I bought a new one. (An ABIT motherboard).

All worked fine for a few hours last night. I decided to reinstall windows and it froze twice. The second time I tried to reboot and it won't post again and I have no video. Can somebody PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE give me some idea of what could be wrong? I've replaced other components so all that's left is the graphics card (ASUS FX5600 i think), processor, and memory.

Thanks in advance,

Gary.

 

[SHAWN]

what kinda of case and psu is the board in. maybe the case is shorting out the mobo or the psu isnt powerful enough or dieing.

 

[gaara]

Could have bad memory, if you have more than one stick you should remove one of them and try booting with the other to see if you can determine the bad one. If you have another PC you can try them in if that fails you can try doing a memory test or seeing if PC boots.

As SHAWN mentioned, your case may be shorting out your motherboard due to it touching it somewhere or providing inproper grounding or something along those lines, again, you can pulled out all the parts, assemble them on a wooden or non electrical conduction surface, and try booting.

You may also need to check if your video card is properly seated in the AGP slot, if your parts are not overheating, or if you have a bad power supply, but the former two solutions which I have provided seem to be the more likely at fault.

 

[Kadahaf]

Take out your memory then clean and replace repeat if more than one mem card, this should be copied and pasted

 

[gaz147]

The case is a Chenbro Gaming Bomb. Have wondered if it is a problem with that but it worked fine for nine months and I have removed and replaced the motherboard.

I only have one memory stick and it's DDR whereas my spare computer uses SDRAM so I can't try swapping it. I've tried removing and replacing it but it doesn't help.

The processor is an AMD Athlon XP3000.

The power supply is brand new.

I've also tried reseating the graphics card.

It's just strange that when I put the new motherboard in everything was fine for a couple of hours. The computer crashed twice and now it fails to post so it sounds as though one of the components will run fine for a while and then cause this.

I also checked the CPU temp and it didn't seem to be going above 40 degrees C.

Sounds like I should suspect the memory?

 

[Nubius]

Just because the PSU is brand new doesn't mean it's necessarily not the problem.

Get motherboard monitor 5 unless you already have some monitoring software and let me know what your voltages are. More specifically the +12v, +5v, and +3.3v lines

If you look and it displays the +12v dropping down to 11.5 or up to 12.5 then your PSU has some bad fluctuation and is probably causing the problems.

Have you tried running memtest86+ and making sure the RAM doesn't give you errors? This will atleast confirm whether or not the memory is bad, this is assuming of course if you have one of those moments where it decides to post.

 

[gaz147]

Thanks for that - if I can just get it to boot I'll be able to test stuff rather than spend a fortune replacing things that aren't broken! I'll also try assembling it on something wooden just in case...

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

Memtest86 is a bootable CD, you do not need to boot into the OS. Download it at memtest.org (I think)

 

[gaz147]

Just thought I'd post an update - tried to get the system to post outside the case. Still no luck so I guess it's down to the video card, ram or cpu. It's just strange that the same components that refuse to post with the old motherboard started working fine again when I changed the motherboard but then packed in again after a few hours!

 

[Samm]

You say the board won't post. Can you tell us exactly what it IS doing.
i.e
do you get anything coming up on the screen, & if so, what?
are there any beeps?
is the hard drive spinning up?
do the keyboard lights flash after you power system up?