OK, what exactly is wrong here?

[DarkMajiq]

Alright, hopefully one of you geniuses can tell me what exactly is wrong here:

I've got a problem with one of my computers (click the Systems link in my sig, it's DarkMajiq's 1.5GHz Athlon). I built it for my dad a while ago. Anyway, he turned it on this morning, and there was kind of a funny burning plastic smell and apparently it was BSODing with all sorts of error messages. So, he turned it off. I came to take a look at it, and the first thing I noticed is that the top of the case is covered in dust (the house isn't entirely finished, and they were doing some work in his office recently). So, I go and unplug all the cables and such, and open it up. And holy shíte was there a lot of dust in there! So I set about with the dustbuster and the vacuum and the duster and managed to get most of it out. So, I start it up again with the case open - the mobo has a convenient little LED that can show you most things that are wrong. Anyway, it starts up fine, goes into Windows. The only problem is the keyboard isn't working (yes, it was plugged in). I also tried another keyboard, and it didn't work either. Anyway, tried a couple more times, nothing seemed to work. I can't get into the BIOS since they keyboard's not working. And now when I start it up, it stalls at the screen right before the Windows ME logo comes up. It's saying something about DMI Updated or something like that. To finally get to the point, I'm thinking that this is a motherboard problem. I'd originally thought processor, since that would have explained the smell, and its cooler was making a horrible noise when I first tried it before cleaning it thouroughly of dust, but the fact that the keyboard's not working would seem to indicate to me the mobo, although the LED runs through the check and shows FF (fully functioning). Should I try to clear the CMOS? Or what should I do?

 

[Storm]

What kind of dust? like wood dust? I would recommend taking off the cpu cooler from the cpu and see if there are any particles around. If its like wood dust and somehow gets its way onto the cpu it will heat up and burn. Thats probably what you smelled the burnt plastic. Finding exactly where the burnt plastic is will lead you to where the problem is.
A screwed up cpu can have all types of problems.

 

[DarkMajiq]

It's paint dust and drywall dust. So I guess I'll try taking off the CPU cooler then. Would that explain the keyboard problems though?

 

[Wolfie]

If the computer is freezing up at the ME logo, the kb will not work. Check the Motherboard over carefully. Look for burnt caps. Or some other electrical signs of overheating on the motherboard. It may be something internal like a Chip, CPU, Vid Card, Sound Card. If he smelled something burning it may have overheated and you may be looking at replacing some hardware of some kind. Without testing all the cards, CPU, or memory on another machine it's hard to say if it's just a bad kb IO.

Good Luck.

Wolfie

 

[SwampsterFL]

Keyboard and mouse reversed?

 

[datallah]

try a usb keyboard... it is possible that you fried the PS2 port.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: datallah
try a usb keyboard... it is possible that you fried the PS2 port.

I would recommend taking off the cpu cooler from the cpu and see if there are any particles around

Check the Motherboard over carefully. Look for burnt caps. Or some other electrical signs of overheating on the motherboard. It may be something internal like a Chip, CPU, Vid Card, Sound Card. If he smelled something burning it may have overheated and you may be looking at replacing some hardware of some kind. Without testing all the cards, CPU, or memory on another machine it's hard to say if it's just a bad kb IO.

All good advice, and definitely clear the CMOS, is the rig still overclocked? if so then after clearing the CMOS leave the settings@default to eliminate the overclocking as a culprit. Also make certain the PSU isn't the what is producing the burnt smell as if it frys completely it'll likely take other things with it.