System quit, now it wont POST

2

2k2_zx2

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jul 13, 2003
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I built a system for my mother in law about a year ago and she calls me today to say it quit today and now it wont turn on. I drive over to see whats going on. The system will power on for about 2 seconds and then shut itself off.

Her system is a MSI K7N420-Pro, 1700+XP, Radeon 9200, and a 10 gig hard drive, 256 megs ram.

I took everything out of the system, except for the board, chip and ram, and it still does the same thing, shuts off after 2 secs, monitor doesnt even turn on either.

I have no parts to test with on her machine to see what may be the culprit, just guessing and buying parts 1 at a time to see what may be the problem is about all I can do, without gutting my system and using it as the guinea pig.

Any suggestions as to where I should start?

Did the cpu take a dump?

Thanks for any help
 
I'd check CPU first, check that the HSF fan is working, try clearing the CMOS.

Regards, Szandor
 
I've just cleared the CMOS and it is still doing the same thing.

The cpu is a retail version, purchased out of town, and has the AMD hs and hsf on it. System was running stock speeds.

If its 100% the chip that is dead, I can RMA it at the store and order one from Newegg and have a spare chip when I get the RMA chip back.

Best bet to get a new chip and give that a try?
 
Originally posted by 2k2_zx2
I've just cleared the CMOS and it is still doing the same thing.

The cpu is a retail version, purchased out of town, and has the AMD hs and hsf on it. System was running stock speeds.

If its 100% the chip that is dead, I can RMA it at the store and order one from Newegg and have a spare chip when I get the RMA chip back.

Best bet to get a new chip and give that a try?
Click to expand...

A 2 second run is usually not processor, its usually failed heatsink fan, failed motherboard, or failed power supply.
 
Update:

Took the system apart, took the chip out of the system, applied AS3, and put it all back together.

Now all the system does is power up and stay on (fans keep running), but doesnt boot, not even the boot up system speaker beep. I found the MSI D-Bracket that came with the board and all it shows is 4 red lights.

I'm leaning towards the processor needing replacing, but not 100% sure.
 
Had the same problem and found that the motherboard had a blown fan header, cant you swap parts from 1 computer to another to diagnose whats wrong, When i bought my FX chip and mobo, i couldnt get anything to powerup only to find that the mobo was DOA, thank god my buddy had a working system to check parts on or i woulda RMAed the CPU needlessly.
 
Check the power supply. If it's not getting enough power some boards simply turn off rather then act funny. Past that only thing I can think of is DOA CPU.
 
I have my main system that I didnt really want to take parts out of to see what the problem is, but due to lack of funds and the fact that the broken pc is my mother-in-law's, I am gonna do some testing to make sure I get it right the 1st time. Gonna start with testing my power supply in hers, then swap chips and see how that goes.
 
Another Update:

Just got done tearing both systems apart and trying every combination of power supply, mainboard, and chips in each computer, found that the MSI board is what is causing fits.

Both chips run fine in my Abit NF7 with both power supplies, but using either power supply or either chip in the MSI board gets a 2 second run and a power-off.

Looks like I'm ordering a mainboard, good thing, as I had a processor in my Newegg cart.
 
Originally posted by 2k2_zx2
Another Update:

Just got done tearing both systems apart and trying every combination of power supply, mainboard, and chips in each computer, found that the MSI board is what is causing fits.

Both chips run fine in my Abit NF7 with both power supplies, but using either power supply or either chip in the MSI board gets a 2 second run and a power-off.

Looks like I'm ordering a mainboard, good thing, as I had a processor in my Newegg cart.
Click to expand...

I had the EXACT same problem with FOUR MSI boards in a months period of time. It was the first and last time I ever bought/buy an MSI board. (KT3-Ultra ARU Board).
 
I had a MSI Board do that as well K7N2 ILSR still havn't got it back from RMA over 3 weeks ago, so I dont know if this one will do that To.
 
Originally posted by NOL1M1TMAN
I had a MSI Board do that as well K7N2 ILSR still havn't got it back from RMA over 3 weeks ago, so I dont know if this one will do that To.
Click to expand...

Took 3 1/2 months for my board to come from MSI :(

Sucked ass =P.

Ended up getting an Abit KTX-333u instead at the time.

Makes it very hard for me to recommend MSI boards to anyone. They have some nice features on their boards, but hrrm.. questionable quality in my opinion.

Then again, the RMA'd board has been running stable for over a year now...


Cheers,

Mr. Pain
 
Originally posted by Stanley Pain
I had the EXACT same problem with FOUR MSI boards in a months period of time. It was the first and last time I ever bought/buy an MSI board. (KT3-Ultra ARU Board).
Click to expand...
Heh, the K7T Pro (KT-133) and K7T266 Pro2 (KT-266) MSI mainboards have this problem as well. As it turns out, there's a bug in the CPU voltage regulator circuit of those boards which, apparently at random, causes a too low voltage to be supplied to the CPU, causing the system to shut down (if it was running; happened to me) or fail POST.

I'll never even consider buying an MSI mainboard for myself or someone else after this.
 
Just got the board I ordered from Newegg.

Put everything from the MSI board into this one, and everything is back and running from the first powerup.

Faulty MSI board was the culprit.

Thanks for all the help on figuring this one out, I was originally going to order a processor until I saw all the problems with MSI boards.
 
yup. check those capacitors on the board. I bet you will find that they are buldged and have a red/orange substance on top.
 
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