Is my motherboard dead?

**Skipjacks** · 08-09-2008, 12:05 AM

This one confuses the hell out of me.

I have a power light for my system on the dash. Today it started blinking due to a loose wire back near the computer in the trunk. No big deal. It's happened before. But when I jiggled the wire to rectify the problem, the system shut off and now it won't go back on.

The power light is actually a fan power light, indicating that the processor fan is running. The wiring harness that's involved here only contains wires for the power button and the light, which are routed back to the power jumper on the MB and into the processor fan's power wires.

Now nothing works. The board has power, as indicated by the little green LED on the board. But I can't get the system to power up even a little bit. I mean nothing. When I hit the power button the fan doesn't even spin a little, and nothing happens.

What the hell could have happened?

And is there any chance of fixing this without replacing the MB? Because that's a serious pain in the *** that I'm sure is going to end up with me sitting in my car for 2 hours reinstalling Windows and all the software. (God forbid Asus could just keep the board I bought 4 months ago in production so I could just buy a new one and swap it out clean...but noooooo...that would be asking too much.)

**JimmyFitz** · 08-09-2008, 12:41 AM

There could be something wrong with the power supply. Even though you say the LED is on, there are actually three supply voltages that have to be present for the PC to come on. Your fan power light circuit could be shorting out one of them. Or it could have damaged one output and the LED is run off a different voltage.

Try unplugging the fan light circuit and see if that helps. If not, try using a different power supply temporarily. If it still doesn't work, unplug all unnecessary components and try again. Good luck.

**Skipjacks** · 08-09-2008, 01:12 AM

Well I isolated the fan and the motherboard from the car by plugging the system into an extension cord and plugging the cooling fan directly into the mobo. Then I tried to short the power jumpers without the button. Still had nothing. So that indicates to me that the problem isn't in the power button/light/fan wiring harness.

If the PSU is damaged it would have to be one hell of a coincidence since I don't see how anything I was doing could have killed it. But I'm willing to give that a shot. Especially since that's easier than swapping the mobo.

If that doesn't work I'll try unplugging everything except the processor chip and see if I get anything.

If none of that works and I have to swap the mobo, does anyone know if windows 2000 is tempermental? I know XP has a conniption when you try to switch a mobo on it. It thinks that you've copied the drive and are putting it in a new machine. If Win2000 more tolerant to that sort of thing?

**Skipjacks** · 08-09-2008, 01:32 PM

Alright I isolated everything but the PSU and the MB. No HD, no other cables connected. Nothing. Just the PSU supplying power to the MOBO and the fan and all I got was the green light on the board. No fan spin up, nothing.

So I brought the PSU inside on another computer and it powered it up fine. So the PSU is fine.

That leaves me with the conclusion that my MOBO somehow got fried.

I still can't imagine what could have possibly shorted out.