Well, maybe God just laughs. I am not so sure men making plans are part of the equation or not. I still have a lot of blogging to do, but this is not it. This will catch up on a small, but very important part of my like. MY COMPUTER!
I was battling for months whether I would build the home server, or buy one prebuilt, I blogged this, and won’t even link back to them. I eventually decided to build one, for several reasons, but one main one was my hunger to build another computer. It appears I will get the chance to build another.
Two weeks ago I bought an AGP video card for Trey’s machine. My machine has an AGP card as well. I figured I would upgrade mine, and give my old one to Trey. On Wednesday, the 30th, I cracked my case and removed my video card. I was just wanting to look at the AGP slot in my computer. There are several types of AGP slots and I was not sure if the new video card would work on my machine or not. I figured out that my machine did not have the correct kind of AGP slot, so I re-installed the video card, closed the case and turned it on. I got nothing. NOTHING! Like the song goes, “Nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing…..” I had reconnected everything, put the panel on, and slid it back under my desk. Well, I dragged it back out, took off the side panel and looked. Everything looked fine. I unplugged everything, took out the video card, re-seated the card, hooked everything else up, and turned it on. NOTHING.
When I type, ‘nothing’, I mean NOTHING. I built this machine four years ago. I know every sound, whir, click and beep as it boots. It is just one of the things you learn when you are intimate with something. Whoops..TMI? When powered on, the fans come to life and that is all. No beep from the speaker as it tries to boot. No access of the floppy drive as it tries to boot. Just the whirring of the power supply and case fans, I am running an AMD chip, so I did install a couple of extra case fans, just in case. I do not get video either. The monitor detects nothing. No input.
I start to back track. I remove and re-install the video card at least four to five times. That is my only guess. I then discover that I have installed and re-installed the NEW video card. Oh crap! I install the correct video card. Nothing. I also discover that I accidentally pulled a couple of leads from the ‘Panel One’ connection. This is a 20 pin connection in the lower right of the motherboard. It includes the speaker connection, the hard drive LED light, and other minor stuff like that. I spend the rest of the night searching for the manual. We moved a year after the machine was built, and the manual is still packed with other books from the study.
On Thursday night I install the new video card in Trey’s machine. He has video running 600 x 480 and 16 color. Damn, that is an impressive video card I bought at Fry’s. I think Crisana could do video better. I uninstall drivers, re-install (sound familiar?) and still have the same problem. Problem or not I still have enough video, barely, to look for an online manual for my motherboard. I have to get those connections in. I start looking and get somewhere, but not entirely. It is now time for LOST, so my life stops so I can enjoy it. I will get back to my re-scheduled like in a couple hours. So ends Thursday.
On Friday I remove the device from the device manager and get normal video back. It just does not have any acceleration at all. Scrolling websites is choppy at best. I install the drivers and Trey’s machine is working like a champ. I then proceed to install software on his machine. His machine is a completely different post, but before the video card debacle, I wiped his machine clean and installed a new OS. So, I spent the rest of the weekend getting his machine ready for, well, him. I did get online manuals downloaded and got nowhere. I put the connections in place and still got nothing. I have been updating the IT guys at work with this problem. It is kind of funny. The main guy suggested that I remove everything from the motherboard and try and boot.  I should get speaker error codes. I removed the memory, video card, everything except the CPU, and got, ready for this: NOTHING! No beeps from the speaker, and it should really be beeping at me.
During the past week I came to the conclusion that my motherboard may be fried. My final diagnostic tool was to take a speaker from an old case and plug it in. How ironic it would be if everything is fine, but the speaker cannot send out error codes. So I cracked the older case, removed its’ speaker and installed it into my computer. The memory and video card are still removed. Nothing. I re-installed everything, just for good measure. Nothing. Time of death, 11:32am.
I spent about a week and a half diagnosing and verifying the problem. It’s dead, Jim. At the beginning of this epic I mentioned the choice to build, or not to build. Well, it appears I get to build again. I will purchase a new motherboard, CPU, CPU fan, video card, and RAM and install that in my machine. I am already spec’ing the components and pricing them. I will update on that as well. To my old AMD/Asus….rest in pieces. Somehow, I fried it.
Just as a last resort, did you try unplugging and reseating in the power connectors?
OR are the fans powered of the motherboard?
shame to have to rebuild a whole new puter, but I guess you can name the new one Isaac.
Several of the fans were powered off the motherboard, but not all. The CPU fan was one that was powered off the motherboard. It was always on, so I don’t think power was the issue. That being said, I have no clue what the issue was.