This is just random

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jordo_99

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well today my computer took a dump. It was running fine but one of my old hard drives wasn't showing up, so I rebooted...it never booted up again. (just a black screen of nothingness...no POST...nothing)

so I take the PC apart and start putting it back together one piece at a time to try and figure out what part it causing it to fail POST or w/e is causing the problem.

After a while of no progress I start toying with the ram...boom, I get through POST (to screen that said boot from CD/DVD, no system disk found because my hard drives weren't hooked up). I shut down and plug in the hard drives and then...nothing, can't even get to POST again.

So I unplug the hard drives again, this time, no POST...same exact set up, nothing changed from 2 minutes ago.

I went through this for the last 5 hours of it randomly working and then not working with the same **** configurations.

Any ideas?

my guesses are:

1.) bad PSU, because my gut is telling me that something is causing it to short out and not give everything power.

2.) bad motherboard, but this doesn't at all match up with why a RAM slot wouldn't work, then work once and then not again 2 sec later.

3.) bad RAM, just because I have nothing else I can think of.

I also think that my hard drive is dead (I have 3 and I'm talking about the 1 that wasn't showing up at the very beginning of this terribly long post)


Any help would be incredible. I'm completely clueless and extremely frustrated.

BTW, no Fry's or anything remotely useful around here either. I have Best Buy and Circuit City in town for parts...which I'm extremely against going to either for a replacement 500W PSU at BB for $150 or w/e ridiculous price they charge for their crappy products. I will consider it if someone is certain what the problem is and then I'll just the part around for troubleshooting once I buy something of value online.

I just re-seated and re-applied Artic Silver 5 to the CPU. I seriously doubt it helps though.

***EDIT***

Still no progress...System will power on for about 3-4 sec then turns off again. (CPU fan starts spinning the exact same time as the system powers back off) This keeps going around in a circle of power ons/offs until I flip the power switch again. An interesting note is that if I flip the power switch the fans/leds plugged directly into the PSU will sometimes flicker for a split second sometimes. This is what leads me to believe it's a PSU related problem.

ALSO, the system I'm talking about is the exact one in my sig...except no Ubuntu anymore and I added a 500gb seagate hard drive about 2-3 months ago.

***EDIT 2***
Just checked a PSU calculator and my system doesn't even need 350W so my computer being underpowered isn't an option either.

Lastly before I go to bed, I checked for POST errors/beeps way earlier and would get beeps if I removed RAM, but after removing video...etc I wouldn't get beeps within the 3-4 sec it tried to boot up.

it's past 4am...I'll check this before I go to work tomorrow and hopefully have some new things to try out.

hmm...I'm thinking it might be the CPU now

Any ideas at all guys?

All in all, I'll probably just end up getting a new mobo and CPU next week if I don't get this fixed soon. I'm just far too frustrated with this to keep working on it without any leads or FRUs (Field Replaceable Units) to test this out with.

come on guys...nobody on here is going to help me? Even if you don't know what the problem some more guesses would be great. At least then I'll have a 2nd opinion.
 
Here is a 2nd opinion. Stop multiposting and edit your original post which you can do for 24 hours.

2nd get a better PSU. You may not need 350W but that doesnt mean your cheap PSU puts out that much. Since you havent said a brand i am just guessing it is just a bargain brand 350W.

Get a real PSU. Not a bargain brand.
 
Sorry about the multiple posts. I'll definitely try to keep that in mind.

I said that the problem computer was in my sig...so it's an Antec TruePowerII 550W which shouldn't be a bargain PSU.
 
there's a way to test your HD to see if its working. seeing that your posting your either using a laptop, 2nd pc or a friends pc. get a USB HD enclosure try to explore it or have the system boot up from that drive. if all is well it at least levels it down to your MB or ram. if a ram swap trick doesn't work it could possibly be your mb.
 
there's a way to test your HD to see if its working. seeing that your posting your either using a laptop, 2nd pc or a friends pc. get a USB HD enclosure try to explore it or have the system boot up from that drive. if all is well it at least levels it down to your MB or ram. if a ram swap trick doesn't work it could possibly be your mb.

Yeah, I borrowed my gf's lappy for the night. Looks like I'm just going to upgrade the PSU, mobo, ram and CPU. I've been wanting to upgrade for a while now and I guess this is a decent excuse unless I get it working Tuesday or Wednesday. If I upgrade then I'll check to see which part(s) failed and keep the rest as backup parts.
 
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