[clug] Linux Server does not want to do a POST

[Paul Bryan]

On Fri, Apr 04, 2003 at 09:37:13AM +1000, Mark Paine wrote:
> Short of stripping it down and starting to swap parts with another system
> I have (Gigabyte M/B, PIII 550Mhz) which my son uses, does anyone have any
> startling insights as to what can be wrong?

This is usually the only sure way of finding the problem. But first, pull everything out except m/b, cpu, ram. turn it on. Do you get beeps? Try it again with a video card. What happens then? You could spend hours trying to figure out what might have caused the problem, but you'll never actually know what did until you start doing this sort of thing. You have to approach it with somewhat of a blank mind. No assumptions!

> The only things I can think of are power problems (with the extra devices
> I've blown something in the PS), CPU has been fried sometime (unlikely as
> similar problems was happening last year), hairline crack on the
> motherboard (a distinct possibility), or one from left field - the
> capacitor problem that was noted a couple of months ago (although I can
> not see any damaged capacitors but have not had a really close look yet).

There is no such as thing as the only thing. It could be anything! I've had keyboards cause this sort of problem in the past, although it's less likely these days. I worked for a few years fixing PC's (among other things), and I learnt pretty quickly that you can't assume anything. Often a solution doesn't seem to make sense, but you when you see it work, you can't argue with it. 

Once you've found the problem, that's when you start with theories like cracked board, overheated CPU etc. Not before. otherwise you'll end up tearing your hair out!

On the other hand, the most common causes that I saw for this sort of problem were RAM, m/b or CPU (in that order).

Cheers,
Paul.