After working faultlessly for the past 2 years my pc has decided not to boot.
Symptoms:

Switch on, get very faint beep then nothing. Power on light lit on MOBO, all fans working ok.

Monitor doesn't come on, green light goes to yellow (or just stays yellow if already on standby)

cd disc drives (2) do not work, will not open.
(power to drives ok)
Have swapped with 3 other disc drives to make sure its not them, same happens.
Have tried all combiations with the disc drives, position, master slave etc, still no go.

HDD quiet, nothing happening there.

The PC doesn't seem to be able to get past the cd disc drives when looking for the boot disc.

Have checked all connections and reconnected.

Monitor is ok, tried it on another pc.

Can't check the graphics card as I do not have another pc with suitable slot, but as the problem seems to start at the cd drives and doesn't get past there then I'm doubtful if the graphics card is at fault (no post beeps to indicate graphic card failure)

Any of you computer boffins any ideas as to what might be going on?

Failed CMOS maybe??

The MOBO is ASUS K8N-E

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Cheers for now

Dave

unplug CD drives to start with and retry.

Might be graphics card or worse of all MB....

Could be the PSU. They sometimes go quite suddenly. It's an easy thing to test if you've got a spare PSU hanging around or know someone who has a garage full of old computers!! If you've got a DVM you could back-probe the Mboard connector to check that the voltages present are what they should be at the various pins...

Otherwise I'd put money on the BIOS on the MBoard.

Disconnect any USB devices, Disconnect all the drive cables , clear each of the drive entries in bios by setting to not fitted, then see how far it gets in boot up.

If looks OK reconnect hard disk -- detect via bios and try booting.

Repeat for each drive in turn until you find where the problem lies.

Thanks Guys,

Dangle_ KT:

I tried booting with no disc drives connected, sadly, same result

Hope its not the graphics card (Geforce 6800gt) as it cost me the best part of £300 at the time
Curiously it would be cheaper to replace the MOBO.

British Trident:

I can't actually get anything on the Monitor to be able to see the bios settings. It just remains on standby. No signal to the monitor although there is no post beeps to say there is a problem with the graphics card.
Have disconnected all the drives and usb devices.......still the same.

BenB;

I'll have to see if I can borrow a power supply although Iam getting a greenlight on the motherboard to suggest the power is ok.

Guys,

Is there any way of restoring default bios settings (jumpers on the MOBO) without being able to see anything on the monitor.

Would shorting out the cmos jumper to reset the cmos do any good ?(might try that once I've found the pesky jumpers)

Many thanks for your help guys.
Keep those thoughts coming.

Cheers for now

Dave

Cheers

Dave

Hi

I would try clear cmos, nothing to loose
I would check all plugs are fitted and seculry on
I would then move on to checking the cpu fan, make sure the plug is on and it rotates freely (by hand) before powering up
I would then move on to disconnecting everything from the mboard, and adding back the bare minimum and listneing to the critical bleeps, make sure you video card is seated properly, only use the minimum amount of memory etc
also on one occasion i have found a stray screw shorting the mboard against teh case, worth a check
good luck

Thanks Scoobie,

I'll get back on it tomorrow. I must admit I'm getting seriously t'd off with it now, messing about with it all afternoon.

I feel some significant expense looming

Thanks all, I'll see about testing the graphics card tomorrow and reset the cmos.

It's been one of those weekends, repainted my chassis yesterday, darned paint hasn't dried has it.
Ah well back to work tomorrow.

Cheers

Dave