Firstly, hello all. I know from experience that this is one of the better tech sites/forums out there, hence my choice. This thread has been made on behalf of a friend who can no longer turn on his pc. This has happened suddenly with no apparent precursor. He is not in the habit of kicking his box and has enough knowledge to know how to care for his system. Indeed if he had the means he would be writing this instead of I. He's had a look around and all connections etc seem to be in place and there is no sign of combustion. Apparently the green LED lights up on the mobo and so does the red LED on his power supply, although no fans turn either in the PSU or on the mobo or GPU, and there is no sign of life from any of the peripherals or drives. We were thinking it could be the CMOS battery or a faulty power switch. However I understand that it could potentially be a more serious problem with a mobo track or a resistor. His setup comprises: Asus A8V Deluxe Athlon 64 3500+ 2 gigs of ram (PC3200) Gainward 7900GS Seagate 320gig SATA HD Hiper 570w PSU XP-SP2 I hope you can help me help him. Thanks.
You could check to see if it's a faulty power switch by shorting the motherboard pins with a screw driver (carefully). Other than that, my first guess would be a faulty PSU. If you have a spare one lying around, try that. If it still doesn't work, then progressively remove components until you can isolate the problem. Best of Luck
Yup, grab a screwdriver, short the pins - if it's your power switch it'll come on straight away, otherwise you've got problems... Could be a faulty PSU, but they don't usually give absolutely nothing, very unusual when they light the mobo up properly.
If the green light is on on the mobo, then the system is getting power from the -5v rail (I think this is the sb rail, I could be wrong). I would try the shorting of the power switch pins on the mobo (check the markings on the motherboard for 'pwr' before you do it). If you can, try hooking up the system to a different power supply. This woudl tell you if it is the psu rather than the mobo. Andy
Sorry for the late reply everyone and thank you very much for your help so far. The concensus seems to be to try shorting the pins. I must admit I've never tried this before, or even heard of it. Do you just have to place a screwdriver between the two pins? Is this safe? Would it be an idea to disconnect the HDD or anything first? Sorry for all the questions, just n00b-nerves I guess.. -Mike (PC owner in question)
you take a small screwdriver and the two pins that the psu connector fits to on the motherboard you short by holding the screwdriver there until you hear the fans start up or you see some form of activity then you take away you hand and the screwdriver.
Late reply again guys, sorry- tried shorting the pins as suggested (even tried hooking up a new power switch), but no dice. Also bought a new CMOS battery just in case, but that didn't help either. Have sent the serial number on my PSU to Hiper and requested details of their warranty because apparently they offer 3 years as standard (I've had it just over 2 years). Thanks again for your responses.
