have this old motherboard.....

[covert24]

I have this old system that i got from a friend and it never wants to turn on. It sometimes does and all is well. The issue goes away completely after its warmed up. Its an ASUS CUW-AM in an old HP system. has 2 things of ram in it, a celeron, 20gb hard drive. the usual... I know there is power going to the motherboard because if you short the intrusion detection with a screw driver you get a small spark. So that just leaves the "turn on" mechanism is busted. is there anyway i can "force" it to turn on or am i SOL?

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

You can try temporarily shorting the pins that the front case power button connects to.
I would first try cleaning and reseating all components.

 

[covert24]

did both. no go.

 

[Peter]

This thing has the "right" age for capacitor flatulence disease. Check for bulged, leaked or otherwise not-quite-right looking capacitors, particularly in the hot areas around the CPU and RAM.

 

[covert24]

will do once i get home. thanks for the reply.

 

[covert24]

nope no blown caps. nothing out of the ordinary physically on the motherboard itself. no idea whats going on with this stupid thing. any ideaS?

 

[Drsignguy]

Can you use a jumper to cross the power pins on the mobo and the system turns on, if so, you probably have a bad switch .

 

[covert24]

nope. already ruled out a bad switch a long time ago by shorting the two pins and getting varied results. sometimes it would turn on and sometimes pressing the switch wuld make it turn on. now neither of those ideas work and im stumped.

 

[Drsignguy]

Interesting, So, have you physically removed the board and checked the solder from the back? may just have a very bad connection. If not, the term "old" is what it is....

 

[PeteRoy]

The CPU might be dead, I had a similar case with a 478pin Celeron and I thought the motherboard was bad and it turned out the CPU had died from a previous owner.

Test it with another CPU if you can

 

[covert24]

idk i got it to turn on but had no video. ive had it with this thing. i spent like 2 hours just sitting here shorting the power switch connection and when it finally worked nothing... i was like wow, kill me. i just bought a whole setup (cpu, mobo, ram) from a user on here for 20 bux shipped so when that comes in ill start interchanging parts to see what is actually casuing this problem.