Help w/ GA-8IE533

stp1978stp1978
edited January 2005 in Hardware
Hi there!

I'm hoping to pick the great minds here for some help / suggestions on my motherboard, which seems to have malfunctioned. It's a Gigabyte GA-8IE533 w/ the Intel 845 chipset.

I turned off my machine at Christmas time and returned from my trip home to find that my computer wouldn't boot. I had turned on the power button and found that the screen wouldn't even come on, although the lights and fans started right up. I'm fairly computer saavy and thought that perhaps I had a hard drive failure, but putting in a second drive didn't seem to work either. I couldn't boot to it.

Occasionally, I'd get the initial power-on screen but it wouldn't go much further than that. Only one time since this began did I get anywhere, and that was an error that Windows needed to boot into safe mode. After trying to reboot normally, the wait screen of XP just kept scrolling over and over until it eventually froze. Since then - NOTHING.

I've got a P4 2.4 GHz with 768 of RAM (although it has now stopped showing the 256 chip and only shows the initial 512 chip), and three 40Gb Maxtor Diamond Max 8 drives. The BIOS is from 10/25/2002, but I can't seem to boot to anything so I'm not able to even try an update.

I'm sure I haven't touched on something important, but I need some help! If anyone has suggestions / things to check / ideas to share I would be more than grateful. Thanks in advance!

Best,
Sam

Comments

  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited January 2005
    Take the computer apart and put it all back together.
  • stp1978stp1978
    edited January 2005
    Thanks for the suggestion, but it hasn't helped. I took everything out; drives, disc drives and all the cards. I put my video card back in the AGP slot, hooked up the keyboard, powered up (fans started up just fine, along with the lights) and still got nothing. The video display showed nothing at all. The keyboard lights didn't flash as they usually do when a computer boots up.

    Any ideas?

    Thanks again!
    Sam
  • flyriceflyrice
    edited January 2005
    Could it possibly be a PSU problem? That seems to solve a lot of things for some reason.
  • stp1978stp1978
    edited January 2005
    I'm not sure if it would be or not - what's the best way to get to the bottom of that? I had power for all my fans / lights / etc. so I wasn't thinking it was a power supply problem. I'm a relative newbie for motherboards, so please forgive my lack of knowledge!

    Sam
  • flyriceflyrice
    edited January 2005
    You could always just try a new PSU. Run to CompUSA, Circuit City, Best Buy, etc buy a good one (ie brand name such as Antec), then take out your old PSU and put in the new one and try it out. If it works, that's the problem. If not, take the new PSU back and get a refund and come back here to see if anyone else has suggested anything by then.

    Or if you can figure it out, maybe a PSU tester. Not sure how those work exactly, but it might help.

    As for being a noob, don't worry, I am too. I just have the nagging suspicion that your problem is the same as I had when I first put together my own PC.
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