Fried motherboard?

[alfroogy]

Ok so here's the deal. My motherboard fried yesterday for no apparent reason. I was lanning supreme commander when all of a sudden my lan dies and I disconnect. The weird thing is that it says I'm still connected to the network, but my brother's pc says network cable is unplugged. So no big deal I'll just restart that should fix it. Except when I restarted my pc posts and then restarts over and over again. does anybody know whats wrong? I have done a bios falsh and reset the cmos. I have also tried different ram, but cannot try different vid card due to not have the luxury of having them lying round the house. I don't think that's the problem though as I get stuff on the screen.

here are my specs if it helps any:
intel p4 3.4ghz cpu
gigbyte ep35 ds3r mobo
2x1gb corsair xms 2 ram ddr2800
leadtek 8800gt 512mb
250gb hdd
coolermaster 550w psu
thermaltake beetle cpu cooler

thanks in advance for all help.

[Whyzman]

If you have a floppy drive you might want to have a go at running the harddriive diagnostics. These are self booting and can be downloaded from the harddrive manufacturer's website.

If you've something on screen it would appear that your vid card is at least working, if not marginally.

If you can access the BIOS, try setting it to boot from the optical drive and then, use a Linux LiveCD to boot from...if it boots your problem is most likely a Windows one.

You'll need to access the BIOS and set the optical drive first in the boot order...

[mjc]

Except when I restarted my pc posts and then restarts over and over again.

When exactly does the restart occur?

And if the machine posts, the motherboard is not fried...

Things that could be wrong, that you haven't mentioned checking...power supply, network card and hard drive...out of those, I would suspect the hard drive and power supply more/before the network card.

Strip all cards and drives from the machine...one stick of RAM and try booting. If the basics are working it should stop with a "No OS found, insert boot disk." type error. If it makes it that far without rebooting, then start adding items back in one at a time (power down, unplug, ground yourself, etc between each addition...don't want to be adding ESD problems into the mix at this point).

Also, are all your fans working?

[alfroogy]

Ok I don't have a floppy but I shoved my hard drive into my brothers pc and it runs and boots fine.

I also tried booting linux and no dice.

I can't check psu cause my spare on is only a 300w so it probably won't even run my graphics card. Network is onboard dunno if there is still a way to disable it though.

it restarts during post I think caus it detects cpu, mobo, and ram in dual channel and then restarts. I'm not sure if it should be picking other stuff up as well?

I have tried stripping down to the bare minimum and the same thing happens.

thanks for the suggestions so far.

[mjc]

Well, it is sounding like a motherboard problem...but it could still be a RAM problem.

Try one stick at time...don't worry about breaking 'dual channel'...if you've got bad RAM, its already 'broken'...

If it still does the reboot toward the end of POST, follow the reset procedure for the CMOS/BIOS settings...there may be a jumper, if not, power down, pull the plug and then pull the battery...tap the power button and wait at least ten minutes before reinstalling the battery and powering back up.

Also, see if there is a means of disabling the onboard NIC without doing so in the BIOS settings...like a jumper.

[alfroogy]

I have done as you suggested and tested the ram one at a time, I even shoved it into a friends pc. The ram works fine.

A cmos jumper reset was the first thing I tried and it didn't help.

there is also no way that I could find to disable the onboard NIC.

looks like it's time to rma this sucker.

[mjc]

Yeah...I'm guessing that it is the NIC, because it is making most of the way through POST before the problem occurs...about where you would expect it check the onboard devices.

[alfroogy]

I just got off the phone with gigabyte and they said it's definitely the NIC so I'm going to try disable it in the bios (if its possible) and go from there.

Thanx again for all the help guys