Computer problem powering up

I buddy of mind asked me to drop over and have a quick look at what's wrong with his computer.

Arrived to find the machine not powering up. Hmmm. No fans turning no post screen, nothing. So, I figure power supply has packing it in. Head over to the local computer store and picked up a sparkle 350 watt replacement. Plug everything back in and press the power button.... NADA! Nothing! Zero!

Hmmm. So at this point I head home and get a spare atx power switch, figuring, maybe his switch has died on his case. Nothing still no power on!

gees.

So, I notice that the board does appear to have power. The led light on the board is on. Oddly, the machine will not power up.

Eventually i put the old power supply back in and the machine does power up!

But only once. It won't power up again, no matter how much fiddling is done.

The board is a asus P4T socket 423 board.

Any ideas as to what might be wrong with this machine? It's almost like the power on switch isn't sending a good signal to the board. But my voltmeter does show that the switch okay and i've tried a different one with the same results.

Any clues would be great.

that sounds like my old asus p4p800dlx. Something went wrong with the board. RMA or get a new board.

I think you might be right on the money this time. I'll have to take a closer look when he brings the beast over tonight.

Asus does have a 3 year warrenty on mobos. Maybe he'll be in luck.



regards

The board is a likely culprit, but before you go through the hassle of RMAing it, I would disassemble the whole thing and try it outside the case to make sure there isn't a short.

This should prove that it's the board and not it is shorted, or that a single piece of hardware has given up the ghost and is keeping it from POSTing. It sucks to go through the whole RMA process just to realize there was nothing wrong with the board to begin with.

jbarket:

Excellent advice. I'm going to tear it down tonight!

Thanks for the responce.

I agree, make sure nothing is shorting. Other than that, the only thing I can think of is that the motherboard is faulty and needs to be replaced.