Firstly "Hi", hope you guys have some inspiration for me here... (!)

In short, my machine won't boot. We're talking slot 1 PIII 450 here with a couple of years old Soyo motherboard (V6BE+), running 640 mb of RAM, ATX psu / case. Last week, returned home to find the machine frozen up, went for the reboot and not really a peep out of it since. Power and HD LED's come on, case fans, PSU fan and all drives spin up OK. No sign of life on either the chip fans. Monitor sometimes 'clicks', but won't fully power up - sounds likie it's dropping into suspend mode.

Here's the best bit: I've replaced (one at a time, like a good boy), the motherboard, CPU, CPU fans, power supply, monitor and video card, having pulled out everything else - NIC, SCSI, sound etc. Sometimes I get onto the POST, occasionally it even tries to boot windows (spit). Very occasionally - maybe 1/40 times! HOWEVER, I don't thnk this is a heat issue, as the times it suddenly shows signs of life are not after long cooling off periods. I have tried wiping out the CMOS, just in case.

Hope someone has a diagnois for this, as then next thing I'm gonna try is leaving it on a Railway line... (joke!). Thanks!

Is the harddrive new?
If not, reformat, if your data loss is not critical.
Start all over, that's my motto.

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What's up with that?

All hardware is of various 'vintages' - but I get the same problems using my three year old IDE h/d's, as I do with using brand new SCSI, or even no H/D's at all. The problems are hardware, not software, so I don't really think the HD's are involved. Thanks though.

Hi;

From the sound of your post, you left the machine on all day and came home to find the problem? Could the machine have taken a power surge? Lightning, or a brown-out?

By the way, what fans are working correctly? You note that the PSU fans run, but then state the "chip" fans do not run. If the CPU fans are not running, this could be the problem - this is a heat problem!

We had computers at work that have gone into sleep / suspend / hibernation and locked out into this mode, try your mobo manual to see if its something you have installed and it may mention something to kick it out of it.

http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

Rooster.... Give this a shot. If you've swapped out the Mboard, wipe the HDD clean and re-install your O/S. Begin with just the basic's (RAM and Video) and allow Windoz to pick up drivers from it's data base. Then go from there with the remainder of your hardware, checking the system for problems as you go, one step at a time. Luck.

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......Indecision may or may not be my problem......
...... Kickin' A Rock....

Have you checked the RAM? Normally in these situations I check the fans, PS, CPU and the RAM first.