Dead Computer!

[Fatguy]

I have a 500mhzP3 on an old P2 era motherboard running two hard drives and 98SE. I was downloading some photos when the machine froze. I could not turn it off except to unplug it from the outlet. Then it would not even try to restart. The hard drives made the usual noises but nothing on the monitor and no hard drive activity after the first couple of seconds - again I have to disconnect the power as the forward switch will not disconnect (does so when operating normally). Checked the hard drives on another machine and all the stuff is there. I have my suspicions but what do you guys think?

[123456]

This can be happening for a number of reasons...
I only know one, however...
Try reseating the RAM....

[Paleo Pete]

Looks like we'll be going under the hood...

Unplug your IDE and floppy cables, see if it will boot long enough to see a picture. Hold the power button down for about 5 seconds and it should shut down. Get a can of compressed air and blow the dust out of the case, if it's been a while since this machine has been given a tune up it might be a good idea to clean the heatsink/CPU and add some new thermal paste.

If you get video with no drives connected, add floppy and try it, then add ONE hard drive/CD ROM drive at a time to check for drive problems.

If you get no video with no drives connected, you could have a bad power supply, overheated CPU or just bad contact somewhere. Take the suggestion made by 123456 one step further and reseat RAM, video card, IDE cables, power cables, basically anything that plugs into anything else...You may have to reseat RAM and video several times, I always do just to be sure. Once the contacts get dirty it can take some effort to get good contact again.

Check your monitor on another machine if possible, to be sure it's working right. My best guess is the video card or CPU overheated.

[Fatguy]

This can be happening for a number of reasons...
I only know one, however...
Try reseating the RAM....


Had me going there for a while as one of the clips was not all the way up but..... no go and I checked the seat of the ribbon, etc..... Any other ideas, or is it a dead processor?

[ErnieK]

Pay attention to Pete says as he knows what he is talking about. (Is that enough grovelling Pete? - Or as they say over here "Is that enough sookin' up? :rolleyes: )

Go here and download the trouble shooting diagrams and follow them step by step if Petes or 123456's solution do not work. In fact download them anyway as they are handy to have on the shelf.

www.erniek.eclipse.co.uk/downloads/sylvanderdiags.zip

[Fatguy]

Thanks for the advice guys. All the connections are clean as it has been worked on many times in the past. Ram was taken out and replaced and same deal. Connections were reseated and were all secure. The CPU was not overheating (as it was just turned on when it froze) and no warning about the fan was present.

Remember that this computer was made in 1998 with a P2 processor and had the usual 500P3 chucked in. If the motherboard was the problem, it was simply not worth the hassle of replacing conponents onto a new motherboard with the old processor. If it was the processor, then the mother board was old and useless and so on. Kind of like taking care of a ninety year old.

So I what I did was to go down to the computer shop and get a box and motherboard which supported the 3.0ghz P4 ht.....and swagged everything onto that. I did not go for the new slots as the boards were too expensive, even though the processor was just ten bucks more..... I now have a 2ghzP4 Hewlett, a 1.6ghz Athlon, and now the 3ghz P4 (with only 256meg Ram (had to take from the Athlon) a 4gig hard drive (with a 2gig secondary harddrive..... :eek: ). This computer will only be used for surfing the net and uploading files onto the server and such - so I don't need that large hard drive. I want it though, so if my off-line computer (currently being used to shoot some infomericals and music videos - Avid editor) gets fried, I can quickly convert this baby to the same task. Anyway, that was my reason for doing it this way; sometimes working on old computers is just not worth the hassle (and I have a lot of experience there..... :mad: ). Once again, thanks.....


Oh.....I did not even reformat and reinstal, I just pluged in the old drive with Win98 and after reinstalling components.....I works as before. But on system it reads the processor as something like 84L family level 1 - what does that mean.....

[Fatguy]

Correction, it actually is: GenuineIntel x86 Family 15 Model 4 Stepping 1

Also, there seems to be a power problem in the wiring of the room the computer was plugged in. If this was the reason.....who would have thought..... However, the original computer would not work anywhere after that initial breakdown, but an interesting reason nevertheless.....

As for the new configuration, stable and working. I will of course, get better hardrives and Ram and move it to XP and configure the BIOS properly for better prerformance when time and finances permit.

[Paleo Pete]

Win98 does not identify CPU speed, just manufacturer and type/family. My Celeron 1GHz just says Genuine Intel x86.

The CPU was not overheating (as it was just turned on when it froze)

Anything P2 and up takes about 10 seconds without proper cooling and it's toast, 30 seconds and you can fry eggs on it. Newer boards use thermal shutdown before it gets hot enough to damage the CPU to avoid that.

[Fatguy]

Win98 does not identify CPU speed, just manufacturer and type/family. My Celeron 1GHz just says Genuine Intel x86.



Anything P2 and up takes about 10 seconds without proper cooling and it's toast, 30 seconds and you can fry eggs on it. Newer boards use thermal shutdown before it gets hot enough to damage the CPU to avoid that.

Thanks for the info. As an aside guys; I opted for a cheapy computer box when I got the processor and motherboard - Big Mistake. Those cheap boxs flex at every panel, they require a sliding bar just to reinforce the card back plate, and this one had painted metal inside (not even decent metal and a very thin metal at that.....). Bottom line is that I spent 20 bucks and got a proper used case (one of those fancy ones with the window an such) that does not flex and has heavy duty switches (the cheapy case also came with a bad power switch). I did not return the cheap defective box because the guy who set it up gave me a decent power supply with the box (that I am using now) and tried to talk me out of the cheap box.....so..... Still, I am amazed at how crappy a box can be designed, the metal on the back could be flexed just by touching it and the mounts for the motherboard were not the push in plastic but just pressed metal..... Yuck! :mad: