Strange No POST - MSI 875 Neo-LSR

Specs:

Msi 875 Neo-LSR
P4 2.4c
1gig TwinMOS twister dual-channel 400mhz
Hard drives
9800pro (not softmodded yet)
Bios version 2.4
LIS 2 Premium
Coolermaster Aurora bulbs
Enermax 420 PSU

This is kind of wierd. I updated my bios from 2.1 to 2.4 last week. Everything was fine. Three days after the bios update, I was surfing the web and the machine froze. Now this is the first time that has ever happend with this box before. It is about a year old. I held the power button till power off and rebooted.

The machine powerd on, my auroras turned on, all the fans spin, I see the DVD drives spin up (the seek lights went on and flickered), I can hear the HDs spinning up, my LIS displays the on message and everything looks normal. However, I do not hear a POST beep and there is no picture on my screen. So I tool around: unplug power and wait, I try different outlets, different monitors, plug other boxes into this monitor and I take out the video card and test it in other systems. Video card and monitor are fine.

What is going on? This mobo is obviosly dead, right? I'm actually asking there because I have no idea what else it could be. So I assume its the bios update I applied as nothing else has changed in months with this rig. Though why it worked fine for 3 days and then decided to die is beyond me. So I emailed MSI's support they want me to send the board in. Well this is a non-starter. I bought the board in the US and now live in the Philippines. Not to mention its a year+ old. I don't think they will fix it for free, will they? What do I do, is there anyway to resucitate this mobo? ANything I can try to give it a "jump start"? Thanks!

*sigh*

I have had this problem with my MSI board also. It was a socket 939 board though (MSI K8T Neo-F). If you search the MSI forums, you will see it's a fairly common occurence. Usually the board requires an RMA. Mine died after setting some aggressive RAM settings... Nothing special, just set CAS 2 and it died. My RAM is supposed to run at CAS2.

Before sending it back to them, Did you pull the battery out when you powered off the motherboard? Try unplugging power and battery, and hit the power button a few times to see if that helps any.

Did you check the chipset cooler? Is it loose at all? Are any capacitors buldging? Have you tested the CPU at all? (I am sure you did)

Thanks AMDhunter. I was just searching the MSI board now and I echo your *sigh* . Seems to be a pretty common problem.

No, actually I haven't tried that yet, thanks! I will pull the battery out this evening (in an hour or so when I get home) and see if that does anything. Will report back when I do.

Chipset cooler is tight but its a bit dusty. Have airdusterd the thing as completely as I could though . Sorry, which are the capacitors? Unfortuantely I have nowhere to test the CPU in. All my other rigs are AMD based. I was lured by the hyperthreading hype and bought my first Intel in years when I put this box together. The 2.4c was the cheapest Intel that supported hyperthreading at the time.

Thanks again!

Update: Took the battery out for 30 minutes, machine of course unplugged. Still won't POST. I remembered that there was this d-bracket thing that came with this motherboard. After some serious digging I found it. The darn lights flash too quickly but I passed the memory detection, initialization for my keyboard, vga, IDE, processor all seem to be fine. It sticks on what is called "early chipset initilization". I am reading that to be the BIOS? Is that right? *sigh* Cable management alone took me over 2 hours when I put this together and I did such a good job Anything else I can try? Thanks!

Update 2. I found the instructions for bios recovery on MSI website. That worked and I went back to 1.8 (the bios version that I think came on my mobo originally). I am still not getting a POST beep but the d-bracket changed. It was freezing on the "initializing keyboard controler". I let it run for a few minutes. After like 2 minutes I heard a beep (single beep). After another minute or 2 It beeped again. During the 6 minutes I kept it powered on, it beeped 4 times. Though the screen was still blank and it wasn't booting or POSTing. I am going to try the bios recovery with incremental bios updates (1.9, 2.0, 2.1, etc) and see if maybe that fixes anything. Its really all I got at the moment unless someone can tel me if those beeps were something usefull. After I get through all the bios versions I'm going to have to go to sleep and fight with it some more tomorrow . Thanks!

I am positive your CPU is fine. It wouldn't even beep if it was dead. It's kinda hard to kill a CPU. I have seen an error about the Keyboard error before, and someone mentioned the way the newer motherboards are made, have some sort of dependance on the keyboard controller to post. (Sounds retarded but I dont know the whole story) Seemingly sticking a USB keyboard can fix that problem.

But you mentioned that 1 beep, which may point to another problem. (Maybe)

If the BIOS you have is an AMI BIOS (and I am sure it is) the 1-beep can be one of three things.

• 1. Normal Post (Obviously not your problem)
• 2. Memory Refresh Failure (check memory, or Northbridge failure)
• 3. Low RPM fan, usually an obstruction.

In my case, it was #2, and after a frustrating as hell amount of time troubleshooting, I sent it back.

Hope this helps a little bit.

Thanks a ton amdhunter! I gave up after taking the whole box apart and playing with/testing each piece of this system in different configs. Theres just no help for it, this board is dead. I am sending it back in but that will take awhile so I picked up an Asus P4C800. I don't think I will buy another MSI board again .