**NOTE** This guide is for systems that were working. Problem 1: No power Change the power lead going to the pc, the fuse may have blown. Unplug the large atx lead from the psu (power supply), short the green pin with a black one (using a paper clip, the voltage between these two pins is safe) and the psu should power up if it works. which pins to short. If this does not work then try another psu in the system. If neither of those two methods worked then try another motherboard.
Problem 2: No display when pc should boot up. Unplug all unnecessary components, i.e. all drives, cathodes etc... Remove all cards apart from graphics. remove any USB devices clear the cmos: using the motherboard manual, follow the steps for clearing the cmos, remove the power from the system, locate the cmos jumper, usually known as JP1, and move it over to short the middle pin along with the pin it wasn’t shorting before. Leave it a few seconds then place the jumper in its original position and reconnect the power. Some motherboards require you to remove the cmos battery while the jumper has been moved. some jumpers You should be left with the: CPU, motherboard, ram, graphics card (or onboard graphics), heatsink, fan, power supply and front panel connected. Try booting the system again. If it doesn’t boot you should get one of three types of bleep code: a short one (2 beeps or so): graphics, reseat the card or try a different one, it may be helpful to try a pci one if available. a long one (a continuous pattern): memory, reseat the memory, try different slots, if you have more than one stick try each stick on its own, try different memory. A siren: probably temperature related or otherwise, check the motherboard manual. If you do not get a beep code then it is likely that either the CPU or motherboard is faulty, try replacing them.
Problem 3: my system is unstable remove all overclocks. check your temperatures, they should all be below 50 at idle, case temp should be ~30, northbridge ~40. Hard disk drives should not be too hot to touch after 30mins or so of running. If the temperatures are too warm, clean the system, especially the heatsinks and fans, thoroughly! If you have fans that are getting on a bit the bearings may be going, you can either replace the fans or lubricate them, i regularly lubricate mine using a teflon based lubricant from radioshack, order code 64-2301, it comes in an ideal applicator. Run a program called memtest which will stress test your system memory. One error is too many. At the top of the screen there are two progress meters, the top one is the overall progress. Let the test run completely. If the memory passes then move on. Piccy the data down the bottom half of the screen is errors. Remove all unneeded cards again. Run the system. If it normally hangs/malfunctions during a certain task, do that task now. put all the cards back in. format and reload windows, installing all the latest drivers from scratch, make sure that windows is up to date. Do not install any utilities such as Norton. Remove any unnecessary drives (i.e. cdroms) run the system. If it normally hangs/malfunctions during a certain task, do that task now. Run super-pi; see the sticky in this forum, as this is a good (but not definitive) test of CPU and overall system stability.
this is an ongoing update to be added to the FAQ... please don't spam in here, anything that is deemed spam by myself will be removed on sight, thanks.
