[Axem]

Hey you guys are all computer geniuses right? Good, here's a problem for you.

I was surfing the net a few nights ago when all of a sudden my computer turned off. Eventually we found out it was the Power Supply and went and got a new one. So after replacing it, we tested the computer again to see if we fixed it. It turned on, but we don't get any real activity from the computer.

All we get is all the fans turning, and the power and hard drive LED's on. But the LED's stay on constantly, which is good for the power one, but I'm not sure about the hard drive one... We don't get any video to the monitor either.

The motherboard we have (A7V880) doesn't seem to have any post beeps, it just makes these clicking sounds. And all we get for those are one click when the power is pressed, then one other click a few seconds later.

Full System Specs:
AMD 2600+
Asus A7V880
Radeon 9600 256mb
512 mb RAM
40GB HDD

I've looked around on some sites without much avail. Any help getting this working would be greatly appreciated.

[Swamp_Thing]

If you don´t get any signal from the HDDs, then you are either missing a OS or the HDD is gone. Try booting with an emergency disk, or the Windows boot disk if you have one. Even better, take off the BIOS battery to reset your settings back to default.
Then check with the boot disk.
Also, make sure all the cables are well seated. And check to see if the new PSU has enough power to run your system.
My bet is you just need to reset the CMOS settings, and it will be ok.

[Hippo]

check the little switch on the back of the PSU, and make sure its set to the right volts/amps/whatevers...

[Axem]

If it was the Hard Drive, you'd think I'd atleast get some video signal so that the computer can complain about it. But anyway, we reseated all the cables, did the CMOS reset and still got nothing. And the Power Supply should be enough for the system.

[Bobboau]

the HDDs are dead, the clicking sound you hear is not the mobo, it's the HDDs beating there heads agaings a wall, time to fork out $80.

if you want a test get a boot disk, disconect all your HDDs if you cen get it booted then you know it's one or more of the HDDs

[Swamp_Thing]

Originally posted by Axem
If it was the Hard Drive, you'd think I'd atleast get some video signal so that the computer can complain about it.  

The system only starts the video link when the HDD is detected and an OS is started. If none of them are present, the monitor never lights up, it stays on standby.

Do you have a second PC available? If so, try the HDD on that. Also, remove your RAM sticks and reseat them properly, one at a time if you have more than one.
Did you try booting with an emergency disk? Are you using XP? You can use Win ME or 98 to make a disk. Ask a friend. Or you can simply use the WIN XP disk to boot. Change your BIOS to boot from the CD-ROM, and try.
Also, keep in mind that if your original PSU failed, it might have burned other components, like vid card and motherboard.
Just how did the PSU fail? Did you open it to check the main fuse?
Did your house´s circuit breaker went down when the PSU failed? As in, did the lights went down? If it did, chances are the PSU was not grounded, and your system might have suffered a power surge.

As far as i know, all motherboards and respective BIOS feature some kind of post beep code. Check your PC documentation for your BIOS type, and visit their site for the code descriptions.
Note that you need the internal speaker to be plugged in to hear the beeps.

[WMCoolmon]

Are you sure the HDDs' cables were in the right way?

[Dark RevenantX]

FEAR THE CLICKITTY CLANK OF HARDDISK PAST!!!

Error: 404
Your Hard Drive that holds your OS is -dead-!
Please hand the electronics store the equivalent of 80 American Dollars for a new Hard Drive.
If the problem persists, throw your computer out the window of a skyscraper and buy a Mac.

[Blitzerland]

Hard Drives fail just as good on a Mac.

If a tree burns down in a forest, destroying the treehouse it contains, will the tree right next to it last longer? And does it have edible fruit? And will the edible fruit CTD?

So many questions.

[Nix]

Whoops, I need to learn how to read.

It looks like you've already done a BIOS reset.  
Next thing I would suggest though is to re-seat stuff, like the Videocard, RAM, make sure everything is seated tight on the board.  If that doesnt work, try taking components out of the system one by one, like unplugging the hard drives and seeing if the video will fire up, unplug sound cards, any sort of peripherals that are not system critical.

[phatosealpha]

Hm.

Any modern system should POST whether there is a hard drive or not, and the POST should have video output.  If I power on this system, or any other system I've used after disconecting all the drives, it still powers on, still POSTS, then complains about a non system or disk error.  If the drives were indeed dead, I'd expect to see a POST, then either a non-bootable disk error or a hard drive read error.  While I wouldn't rule out that the PSU took the Hard Drive with it, I don't think that alone would explain what you're seeing.

[StratComm]

I've been seeing this a lot recently for some reason.  Haven't yet figured out what's causing it.  It really sounds like the MoBo, though I don't know enough specifics about them to give a lot of concrete advice.  If you had another computer cross-platform testing parts can help narrow down things like disk failures/RAM errors/etc, but once it gets to the motherboard level you're pretty much stuck.

Though I will ask, what kind of monitor do you have?  I've seen certain monitors whose power supplies go bad and just act like they are in standby all the time, when in fact they are recieving data.

I've also seen systems that will boot without video, to the point that you can log in/hear the startup sounds and shut back down properly if you know how to do it with just a keyboard.  A continual light on your hard drive indicator may or may not be bad; have you tried just letting it go for the amount of time it would normally take to boot up?

[Nuke]

sonds like you zapped the cmos, the reason the hard drives are beating themselves up is that they dont have a clue how to operate themselves. you need to ground yourself before you start tinkering.

dont be so quick to condemn your hard drives to the scrapheap. try them in other computers first. thats why it pays to have an old junk computer laying around for parts testing.

as for computer genuses, nah. a genius doesnt need a computer.

[karajorma]

I'd go with those who suggested resetting the CMOS. You've got a fairly new motherboard and that thing should definately post regardless of what you've done to f**k up the hard drives.

If that doesn't work disconnect everything except the video card, memory and processor (and processor fan obviously!) and see if you can get that to post (I don't know if this is one of those Asus boards that talks to you instead of having beep codes, if so leave the speakers connected).

[Swamp_Thing]

Originally posted by karajorma
(I don't know if this is one of those Asus boards that talks to you instead of having beep codes, if so leave the speakers connected).

It talks?? What does it say? "Shall.we.play.a.game?"
Or is it a more Hal9000 kind of thing?
Seriously, i never heard of that before. What model is that? Although i much prefer the low tech aproach of the beeps.

[Stealth]

Originally posted by Swamp_Thing


The system only starts the video link when the HDD is detected and an OS is started. If none of them are present, the monitor never lights up, it stays on standby.

some ppl need to check their facts before they give out advice... or they'll just confuse people even more

Though I will ask, what kind of monitor do you have? I've seen certain monitors whose power supplies go bad and just act like they are in standby all the time, when in fact they are recieving data.

that doesn't explain the hard drives making noises and the activity lights staying on.  


geez, this guy's received every piece of advice from bad HDDs, to a bad motherboard, to a bad video card, and everything in between. *shakes head*

[StratComm]

Originally posted by Stealth
geez, this guy's received every piece of advice from bad HDDs, to a bad motherboard, to a bad video card, and everything in between. *shakes head*

The HD activity light isn't a perfect metric for the state of the hard drive and I wasn't sure how loud the clicking is.  Though the point of my post was to suggest things that he may not have considered, no matter how unlikely, because if you don't check that stuff then you can end up on a wild goose chase over another direction.  Believe me, I've gone through that before.  Everything needs to be checked rather than just telling him his motherboard is fried or something, though the clicking, if it's loud, is not a particularly good sign.

[vyper]

1) Many boards still give video output if hdd(s) are missing
2) Board is nuked. Do you have a spare one you can get your hands on for testing purposes?

[Flipside]

Has anyone followed WMCoolmans suggestion and just made sure the lead is in right?

[Axem]

No breakers went off, everything else around the computer was still on. The monitor works fine, and the speaker is hooked up to the motherboard correctly.

We tested the power supply and only got the +5V Standby and the Power On giving any voltage. We opened up the power supply and the fuse was intact, but there was a burn mark between two leads on a component, which led us to think it was the power supply. Which it was, but now it seem to have spread.

I still don't see how the hard drive could cause any of this. A computer will begin to boot without a hard drive, and then complain about it when its through with everything else. The hard drive COULD be damaged, however it's hard to read the warning without video (If only I set that talking POST thing up).

I had nothing but the power supply, mobo, cpu, and video card hooked up and still no video, and still had the clicking sounds. So unless by some quantum reaction between the hard drive and the power cable, the clicking is not the hard drive. Plus the Hard Drive light is on with no hard drive connected, which really shouldn't happen.

In the next attempt, after reseating all the cables and whatnot again, I pulled out the video card and put in an old PCI video card and tried it again. Still no video. And yes that PCI video card works cause its the one I'm using right now.

So now my guess is the motherboard now. I can't really test the video card, because the only AGP slot in the house is in that motherboard. But knowing my luck so far, that will have blown too...

Thanks for the help so far.