wombatman

Well, Christmas came, and along with it, some new computer parts. There's a long story to this, but I'll make it short:

I think my old computer's AGP slot has shorted out or something. Why?

-Checked all connections
-Tried different monitor with different monitor cable
-Tried different AGP card

The only thing I changed before the computer's hissy fit was the power supply. Went from a 430W thermaltake to a 500W ultra x-connect. I don't think it's the power supply because everything powers up just fine. All fans turn on and stay on as long as I keep the power on. The hard drives show activity and the CDrom drives do as well (like it's starting up and trying to boot). The weirdest part is that I get no error codes of any kind, and I know I would (if there was an error) because I had the heatsink not quite seated and I got the voice warning of "System failed CPU test."


Well, the parents were cool enough to pay for an overnighted motherboard (after trying 3 separate, known to be working video cards), so this is not a major problem anymore. Still, if anyone would like to suggest things to try, I'm certainly game to try them.

flat5

take the memory out and see if you get a beep code

I have serviced Asus boards that won't beep with bad memory.
No memory, they beep.
So you might try other memory if available.

heyal256

I actually had the AGP slot on my old mobo go bad on me. I traced the problem to having bad capacitors on the mobo. The capacitors that went bad first were the ones that supplied power to the agp slot. I was lucky that I had an old PCI video card that i was able to use until I got a replacement mobo.

In case you aren't aware of bad capacitors. http://www.badcaps.net/

xepherys

It's possible, wombatman, but there are toher possibilities as well.

First, since you were in there mucking about, something COULD'VE been knocked around. If the computer POSTs, you shoudl get a single beep/chirp. If you don't it very well may NOT be starting up. Most drives will do a quick read/position check when they first get power. That doesn't mean anything except that they're getting power (which doesn't come through the mobo anyhow). I would remove ALL cards and just have the video card, memory and CPU in there and power it up to see if you get signal. You can also try removing and reseating all of those components. Also, you can try taking the board OUT of the case and doing the same to verify nothign got knocked behind the board that might be shorting it out. If that all fails, then yeah, it may very well be the board.

wombatman

Thanks for all the suggestions, guys. The new board arrives tomorrow, but before I do the switch, I'll investigate further as you all have suggested. Worst comes to worst, though, I could use this board as practice for that Vcore mod (it's another thread below) if the new board has the same trouble.

wombatman

Flat5, you must be a genius. It was indeed a SINGLE bad memory slot causing the problem. All 4 DIMMS worked fine by themselves, and it turned that just the one memory slot was the problem. So I now have a working powerhouse with half a gig less memory, my dad's computer has half a gig more, and there's a brand new Asus P4P800E-Deluxe about to go on Ebay.

flat5

Good. My point was that beep codes can be misleading.
When I did not get any beep or video, I thought the mainboard or CPU might be bad. I expected the mainboard to tell me by a beep code if a memory module is bad. Not always the case. Perhaps the memory is defect in such a way that the mainboard is waiting for the memory to complete an operation. The diagnostic system then hangs. Of course, in your case, it seems the mainboard has a problem.

Just guessing :-)