Any suggestions, please? -UPDATE - BUT JOY

[Basil Chupin]

On 10/09/2010 00:02, Basil Chupin wrote:
> This morning (many hours ago now) I booted up my system, had some
> upgrades to 10.04.1 done (almost all to do with Firefox) and then,
> suddenly the monitor screen went black, went into "sleep" mode - and
> there were no responses from the keyboard or the mouse.
>
> Rebooting achieved nothing.
>
> While all the fans in the system (7 of them, including the CPU fan) plus
> the HDs were working/spinning, the system would not boot, and there were
> no beep(s) from the mobo to indicate what was wrong.
>
> My conclusion was that some part of the mobo was dead.
>
> But what?
>
> Could anyone please offer suggestions as to what I could check to see
> which part of the mobo has 'died'?
>    
[PRUNED]

Well, I have followed everyone's advice - except for one from Dotan - 
and after "stripping" the mobo and testing and then "populating' it 
again and testing I have found that:

1. the 12V and 5V outputs from the Antec PSU are spot on with their 
voltages;

2. the mobo is getting the 12V, from the additional socket, without 
which the system will not boot;

3. the mobo is getting power because the graphic card is getting the 
power from the mobo and not from any Molex connector (like my normal 
card does);

4. the LED for the RAM is lit when the power is on so there again there 
is power to the mobo (?by way of the ~2.5V rail);

5. all the fans (7) are spinning and both the HDs are running - one of 
the older ones is even trying to read something (I can hear the heads 
moving by using a simple "stethoscope");

6. all the capacitors look as if they were manufactured yesterday;

7. to keep Cybe R. happy I put in a brand new, shiny, untouched by human 
hands until now, CMOS battery

but there is no beep when the system is started :-( .

The only suggestion by Dotan I did not attempt is to remove the RAM and 
'fiddle' with it. Getting at it with all the (heavy) cables from the 
Antec PSU is mind-boggling :-( . (When I build a system I put everything 
together first and then as the last item I install the Antec PSU.) Also, 
as I mentioned in another post, the POST should alert me if there was a 
problem with RAM....and...

...the same should also happen if there was a problem with the mobo or 
the CPU......

So....after all this does anyone have a brainwave as where to look at next?

The CPU?

The BIOS? If the CMOS battery was dead, how would this affect the BIOS? 
With a new battery shouldn't the BIOS come alive at its default values 
(or like any nVRAM it can only be written to for so many times before it 
dies?).

All you peoples who do refurbishments and such, what is your gut 
feeling, based on experience, as to what could be wrong? :-) .

Thanks again for earlier responses.

BC

-- 
Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it.