hi my dads computer refuses to start up after someone blew the house fuses with the toaster. its surge protected as well.
specs.
gigabyte 7vaxp ultra
amd athlon 2500
2x 512mb 333
radoen 9500 pro 128mb

i have taken everything off apart from the above, replaced the battery for bios, cleaned everything spotlessly. cant see any blown capacitors anywhere, checked ram individually
the power seems ok as system turns on all fans, lights, (ram lights orange not sure if it should be green). no beeps nothing when turned on, runs for about 5min then shuts off. when hdd and dvd drives connected they span up ok.

question is have we fried something and how to test which bit it is, dont have access to other parts as they either dont fit this motherboard or are laptops. dont want to just buy each bit new till i find out which ones bust as i would rather upgrade it all instead of having 2 systems that are a few years OLD Some damage may have been done to the cpu or the graphics card, can you see any thing on the SCREEN at booting?
any Bios data such as drives ram or even any windows start up showing on the screen ?


I am sorry to say this but most surge protection gadgets work once and once only, and OFTEN that surge is the one which is not noticed, the thermal fuse/capacitor/resistor/thermal diode/ blows and after that its is only an extension SOCKET. The more expensive over £100 ones often can be reset and retested, they work very well but any of them can not really be trusted unless there is a method of checking/testing it is reliable.
a few years ago we used to tie a few knots in the power cable or even added a few ferrite rings into the knots , the phone, and the network cable then the power surge burnt out at the knot , we then only replaced the power cable and tied the knots in the new one again, I cannot recommend you do this and I am not recommending you do this of course.
If you're not getting a POST (beeps), then you may have either:
1. a power supply that is defective/blown and took the motherboard with it
2. a defective/blown motherboard

Have you disconnected EVERYTHING / hard drives, cdrom drives, etc. and tried booting with nothing but the RAM, CPU & video?

Alan <>< hi, yes i get nothing on the screen at all, and everything apart from ram, cpu and graphics.
psu works as disk drives worked when connected.
have been looking for replacement parts this evening and it may work out cheaper to upgrade it all than find something that fits the motherboard or new motherboard with the right connectors that i need for drives/sound etc. its so daft as i was happy with the performance"...psu works as disk drives worked when connected...."

Just because the drives power up doesn't mean the power supply is good, only that some power is getting to the drives.

Try a power supply first as it is much less expensive that the rest of that stuff.

Alan <>< Its your power supply, thats allin simple terms the power supply unit has a variety of rails which provide at least three voltages 3v,5v,12v if any are damaged then the motherboard cannot startup , bits of the supply may still provide a short supply then cut out.

a good start wood be to replace the power Supply Unit with a good branded unit, I would not recomend any cheep and nasty as they can cause more damage, and make sure that all the correct and up to date specification connectors are fitted for crossfire etc as they usualy are made with a sfe system it stops before it damages any computersQuote from: deep on September 24, 2007, 03:46:34 PM

Its your power supply, thats all