Total System Failure

[tygerman]

My board did the same exact thing, replaced and all is well. By the way it was my second bad board.

[Oldjim]

Just had confirmation from the computer test. It is the motherboard.
I was impressed he tested it in the case, out of the case, changed graphics card, changed processor, changed ram all for £20. Seems good value to me.
He said he had never seen this type of fault before but found that the board would boot up about one time in ten and when it did there were no problems in booting into Windows.
Side issue - if after all the tests/changes he managed to boot into windows XP that will really have messed up my product registration. Interesting to see how Microsoft respond - don't expect any problems as they must be used to this sort of thing.

[dolanenwindrift]

Microsoft will just give you another confirmation number if you need it, though you will have to call them.

[glitch]

so your basicly saying your computer is now booting but only once out of 10 trys? guess you've had more success with it than me or tygerman.........

I know once I had a computer in the shop and I tried turning it on and it came on then immediately turned off so I tried it again and it was fine, even after restarting it multiple times so I ignored it and we were already charging them a good bit for other repairs on it and I figured it was just a glitch or maybe the button was jammed. I regerted that decision cuz I got a call the next day from the customer saying their computer unexpectedly shut down -.- on them. Of course this wasn't in the original complaint and they had no previous issues with the PSU and it did happen to me once but I ignored it after futher testing.

[Oldjim]

Just to update.
The rma was approved with no problem and a new board arrived today.
Installed and seems to work OK. Will let it settle down for a few days before trying to overclock.

[Daniel ~]

I got my 8RDA+ back from a re-capping yesterday! "Oh happy day"!

Glad you up and around again as well Oldjim!

[AaronATX]

Originally Posted by Oldjim

System is as signature.
Problem started yesterday. The computer refused to soft boot.
Switched off power and back on. Booted OK.
Today - same thing but this time switching off the power and back on did not solve it.
No lights on the motherboard but sometimes when I try to switch on after turning the power off and on I get a short burst of power (the cpu fans manages about half a turn and the LED shows FF) but then everything goes dead again.
Unfortunately I don't have another ATX power supply to test it with.
Is the problem likely to be the psu or the motherboard.
Is there any way of testing the psu

Got the same motherboard in on friday, along with the +3200....

*sigh*

Tore down my current nforce2 rig so that I could assemble the new one. Used my powersupply, and ram from the nforce2 setup in my sig.

Assembled the board on the motherboard mounting frame from an old atx case I had stripped down, which sits on my anti-static mat which is grounded. Used a wrist strap that is grounded to the mat also. Plugged in a power-on switch to the motherboard.

Same exact problem. Brief spurt of power and then it dies. powersupply, cpu fan (retail) chipset fan, videocard fan all spin just briefly, a quick FF code pops up and then its instantly dead and will not restart unless the powersupply is unplugged for a few seconds. Then the same thing happens again.

I then removed EVERYTHING from the board except for the cpu/heatsink and tried it. Same situation.

I have built at least 50 computers like this in my life since I was 17 years old. I am 28 now. Not to mention the countless hundreds of times I have torn down machines and rebuilt them for people who ask me to rebuild/repair other machines for them.

To date, I have fried 2 in my entire time in the hobby. One was an nforce2 ABIT NF-7. I was using a processor fan with a reostat (spelling?), a smart fan II.....I didnt pay attention to where I set it down and the metal part happened to land on the motherboard, and when I powered it on, ker-pow. Whoops. That was entirely my fault. I didnt RMA the board, I bought the person another one.

The only other time I have fried something was when I was trying to overclock a +2200 in an asus a7n8x. The multiplier on the chip was locked, so I used the "wire trick" to unlock it. This was successful, however as I started to push the fsb higher and higher it eventually perminately corrupted the bios. I tried hotflashing the bios as it was a fairly common issue at the time with those boards if you overclocked them too far. That didnt work....I didnt RMA the board.

Now that brings me back to my current situation with my new, dead, epox board. The fried bios on that asus board exibited the EXACT same problems this epox board does (brief spurt of power and then nothing).....BUT in my hours of tinkering with the asus board I did find a way to make it actually boot up, ONCE. And it is a repeatable process.

Pull the bios chip off the board (yes I have the special tool for that), remove the mobo battery, unplug the powersupply, clear the cmos, and let it sit for 10-15 minutes. Reassemble everything and it would boot up and post as if nothing was wrong. I would then go in and reflash the bios with the most up-to-date version. Unfortunately with that board, as soon as I tried to reset it or power it off it wouldnt come back on again and I would have to repeat the whole process.


So, I tried the same thing with my epox board last night and I was able to get it to power on. So my armchair-expert diagnosis is that there is a problem with the bios. After powering it back down it refused to boot again and continued the same problems. I havent messed with it since, as I re-assembled my nforce2 board with the parts I was using for the epox, and it all works perfectly.

I am going to contact newegg and request a replacement board.


Argh. Owell, noone is perfect, and I know computer parts are sometimes faulty. I have used plenty of epox products in the past (this post is being typed from my 5+ year old ep-8kta3 that I use as a fileserver) and will continue to do so, unless I have a problem with this RMA. If someone can prove to me that I broke it then I'll buy a new epox board. But I have been doing this long enough to know I did not do anything wrong in this situation.

If someone can proove me wrong i'd appreciate it so I don't make this mistake again.

[danrok]

Have you had any better luck yet AaronATX?

[AaronATX]

No, I have tried everything possible except for trying another 64 bit processor as I have no access to another. I just sent a friendly email to epox tech support to request an RMA, or even advice as to something else to try...but to be real honest I have tried it all, going far beyond what the "normal" home pc assembler should be expected to do as it relates to building a brand new computer.

Unfortunately newegg will not alow me to RMA/refund directly to them.....I am hoping epox doesn't let me down here.

I was sooooo looking forward to gaming all weekend on my new system

[AaronATX]

Oh, and including myself, it seems that there are now 4 separate cases where people have experianced this exact same thing.....

[AaronATX]

quick update....I just tried to boot the board with no cpu and it does power on and stay on......hmmmm......

[AaronATX]

*edit* I can't decide if its the mobo or the processor. I've removed the cpu and inspected it as closely as possible and there are no obvious defects/damage to it....

[DaveBC]

Originally Posted by MONKEYMAN

The brief lighting up of your board is the capacitors discharging any residual charge thay are holding and the post code FF means shutdown sewuence complete(at least it does on my board).
Just to clarify to start with there are no lights on the board lit up at all?

Had and 8kda3j did exactly the same thing right out of the box. But I had a new 500 w Aspire w/34 amps on the 12v. RMA'ed it and the next one worked fine.