PCA Forums

First the specks.
Asus a7n8x-e
2600+ barton
512x2 Mushkin ram
ATI 8500 video
IBM 40 gig drive
Ever since I moved two comps have been giving me some trouble. I guess 750 miles in the back of a U-Haul wasn't a great spot for these.
The computer started acting up a couple weeks ago. At first one of the onboard nics quit working. I just plugged it into the other port. Then the other one quit. Now I think its a router problem, and had no time to mess with it.
Its been off for a week or so. Now it won't post.
If I reset the cmos it will post as long as I don't change anything in the bios. Even the changing the date and saving will cause a no post. At first I thought it was the battery. But I tried a new one and its still the same.
Tried removing everything and reseating it all and still nothing. Even pulled the CPU and replaced the compound. Cleaned the fans. Still will only post when I don't set anything in the bios.
Even leaving the bios at default it will only post the first time the cmos is cleared.
Do you think it is a bad board or maybe a CPU? Or is there something else I should try?
Sorry for the long post.

Im willing to bet a capacitor has a loose solder connection. Emachines would do the exact same thing when there was a leaky or popped capacitor.

Do the caps look like this:


or leaks:

All the caps look fine. I'll have to remove the mobo to see if any are loose.
Could a corrupted bios do this?

Could be but doubtful. Maybe power supply, it has caps in it too.

Unfortunately, caps don't always leak visibly I just had a board fail just like this a few months ago. Absolutely no visible capacitor leakage or bulging, but it was mostly dead (would only boot once in a while & even then not completely). Boards of that era are particularly prone (any manufacturer).

However, yes, it could be the power supply caps as well. Been running into many of those lately.

Motherboards are not just about the caps, unfortunately troubleshooting them becomes a pain due to the large number of traces and components on the board.