Have I fried my pc?

[Nona]

Or should I say, has my wife fried it? She's told me that the main pc was bleeping for a few mins...eeeoooeeeooo...and then it shutdown. She tried booting back up, but after just a few seconds it just dies. I've gone through the startup process after letting the pc cool for a few hours and this is what I've checked with the missus (over the phone..)

She removed a side panel and grounded herself...then plugged the power lead in.

A green led lit up on the motherboard.

She then plugged in the power lead and hit the startup button.

The case fan started to spin but stopped after 1-2 seconds.

The led stays lit, but nothing else happens??

 

The motherboard is ASUS p4s8x-x...1.8ghz, 1gb ram.

 

A few things to add...I recently upgraded the RAM (about 2 weeks ago) with the correct, genuine Crucial 512mb RAM. It's been fine and shows 1gb in the system hardware.

I also replaced the case fan for another, identical one. This was running ok when I fitted it approx 1 week ago.

 

The power is the original 300w jobbie and apart from adding a USB card about a year ago, I've not changed anything else.

 

Help please?? :-(

[SS]

While its difficult to tell, it sounds like an over-heating problem. Modern motherboards will have an overheating alarm (the beeping) which kicks in at a certain temperature.

 

Also, the behaviour of switching off after a few seconds sounds very much like overheating. At a certain temperature (70 degrees on the PCs I've seen but it varies) the motherboard will just cut power to stop the processor melting. And whilst you let it cool down for a few hours, a processor which isn't receiving sufficient cooling will heat up VERY quickly.

 

The case fan is just a nicety in this situation, its the processor fan you want to look at. If its not spinning (and they can break for any number of reasons) then the PC is going to stop very quickly.

 

As you say you recently fitted RAM, have a look to see if a power or other cable has got itself positioned such that its stopping the processor fan from turning. This happened to me once on a PC I built for myself and I can imagine its easy to do if you're inside the case for any reason.

[Nona]

Hi, thanks for the reply. I have only just got a friends pc to work to be able to get on the net!

 

I bought a faster pentium 4 to upgrade it and I tried fitting it in the board to see if it would boot (the old one looked ok)...exactly the same thing, a completely blank screen with no indication that the pc is booting. I tried without the new RAM fitted...same deal. I'm sure the mobo is fried and I need another one. If I get one with a cpu, I'll be selling 2 x P4 cpu's on ebay!

 

One more thing...the old power supply was getting hot so I've bought and fitted a new 400w jobbie...both fans now spin and the hard drive begins clicking away, but still a blank screen and no indication that the boot process is continuing.