PC won't post

[CeilingHoles]

Normally, I'd get a single beep when I turn on my pc, but now I get nothing. It stopped working the other night when I powered on my pc a second after it shut down. I think it might be the motherboard or PSU. My configuration is in my profile. Any ideas? Thanks.

 

[mechBgon]

Plug headphones or powered speakers into the green jack on the rear. Does the onboard POST Reporter say any error messages?

 

[CeilingHoles]

Nope. no error message

 

[mechBgon]

Try this next:

1) unplug the computer from the wall

2) remove the CR2032 battery from the motherboard

3) move the CLR_RTC jumper (the clear-CMOS one, I think that's its name) to the Clear position and leave it there for ~30 seconds, then move it back to the normal position

4) replace the battery

5) plug in the system, see what happens. If nothing else, this reverts the board to defaults, which I believe includes the POST Reporter being turned on.

 

[CeilingHoles]

No message

 

[mechBgon]

Dang! I have a K8N-E Deluxe myself, and it did take several clearings of the CMOS to get it working once (I had set the RAM to 1T command rate, NOT a good idea with a Clawhammer ). Try the routine again.

Otherwise, next thing I'd try is disconnecting all drives from power & data cables, try POSTing that way... if it won't POST, then try also taking out the sound card and swapping in some low-powered AGP or PCI video card.

 

[CeilingHoles]

I reset the CMOS 2 more times, and I tried disconnected the drives and taking out the sound card - still no luck. Unfortunately, I have no extra video card to try.

 

[mechBgon]

Hook the optical drive back up. Does the system try to access it on and off when you try to POST again? If so, toss the original Asus mobo CD in there and do a reset. The board is supposed to have a failover thing where it can recover its BIOS off of that CD if it can't POST. Sometimes. Nothing to lose, anyway

 

[CeilingHoles]

I tried opening the drive, but whenever I push the button, it starts making wierd noises..

 

[mechBgon]

Eeeek :Q Errr... power down, paper-clip hole?

If you think the BIOS is hosed, which seems likely, one option is to order a replacement BIOS chip pre-programmed with the latest K8N-E BIOS, http://www.badflash.com is one place I know does that.

 

[CeilingHoles]

Hmm...maybe I'll try a new bios chip. I'm not sure about that website though. Have you ordered from there before?

 

[mechBgon]

I haven't ordered from them before but they've been around since... well... at least about five years that I can remember As long as it's still the same outfit and not an imposter or something, right?