TOASTED Symptoms

[inon^]

How to find if mobo is toasted or CPU?

[Toaster]

If all you did was install a sound card and drivers and this resulted in the system not responding, remove the sound card and retry.
Under the ATX form factor/specification, if the system board has a configuration error, the system will act dead and the power button will take 4 secs to shut down the system.
Id start undoing whatever you did till the system restarts.

[joshmu]

Depends on the degree of "toasting" If it's completely fried it won't do anything. Fans will be on, you might have a HD LED active, but you will get no beeps.
What is your machine doing?

------------------
Josh
joshmu@aracnet.com
*------------------------*
Suggestions Only, Not responsible
for damage caused by following
my Suggestions.
http://www.alladvantage.com/go.asp?refid=EAX491

[inon^]

After installing sound card drivers, it is supposed to restart. But nothing came up and the screen is blank. I pressed the reset button, it did not reset. I pressed power button, nope nothing happened. So, held the power down for a while. There was a long beep and system powered off.

Now, I have to hold the power button pressed for a few secs to power it on. Then the fans, hard disks spin but there is no video signal. Lights on the monitor keep blinking indicating no video signal. The system won't post at all, no beeps and no softmenu. Neither the keyboard lights come up.

[inon^]

Toaster,
Currently I removed everything and there is only video card, RAM, keyboard, floppy & processor are on the mobo. The mobo is out of case and on the desk. I put insulation tape on the screw holes for extra care.

I am trying to get POST. It won't POST. I switched the PIII with Celeron from my old system. Still the symptoms are same. Thus the suspected components are either the mobo or Diamond S540 Xtreme AGP card. The monitor lights blink (they do when no video signal). This blinking lights on the monitor makes my suspicion strong towards video card.

One more thing, when I turn the mobo off by pressing & holding the switch down for 4secs and then move the CMOS reset jumpers to clear CMOS and move back, the system powers back. That means mobo is ok?

Assuming mobo is ok, what could be the chances that the video card IS DEAD?

I set the DIP switches and disabled SoftMenu (assuming that CPU is o/c beyond limits. No use)

Please help. Thanks a bunch.

[glc]

Do you have an ISA video card to throw in there to test it? If you are overclocking, the AGP and PCI busses may be running out of spec.

[inon^]

glc,

I don't have an ISA card. Well, I thought about AGP & PCI going out of sync. But, clearing the CMOS should have cleared all of them, and I did clear the CMOS.

How can I test if the mobo is ok?

[glc]

The only way to truly test the motherboard is boot with nothing but a processor, 1 stick of known good ram, and an ISA video card. A PCI video card can be used as long as you *know* the FSB speed is on spec.