Help to get PC working please

On 6/5/06 1:43 AM kony wrote:
On Mon, 5 Jun 2006 11:19:33 +0800, "mehere"
wrote:


First sorry for cross posting I was not sure which NG would give me the
better response.

OK

I have a PC I am trying to rescue form my Parents. They had a mouse
infestation and they got into the PC and obviously the PC stopped working.

I have now cleaned out the PC and removed all the crap of all boards by
using a very similar process as at
http://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthr...3&page=2&pp=15
and all appears to be looking good.


I didn't see the system but most of the "dirt" that
accumulates on an already assembled system is only cosmetic,
asthetically unpleasing to the person servicing it but
unless it's severely blocking airflow, won't be a problem to
operation. Even so, if your parents' place is still
susceptible to mice you might look into installing metal
screening over any (large enough) openings.



I have reconnected everything and having no additional luck.

Symptom is that the MB appears to be gettng power (can see the LED's light
up) and when I push the power button the CPU fan and two other case fans
spin for a brief couple of seconds and then nothing.

So my question what could be the issue can you point me to what I should
look at first. I tought of a new case with a new Power supply, but thought
before I do that I'd ask here for some ideas.

BTW its an ASUS A7V8X MB with an Athlon 2.4Ghz CPU I think



I've washed quite a few boards. The main issue is to not
just pull the board out of (tapwater) and leave it sitting
to dry with the water beading up on the contacts. Carefully
(so as to not bend the circuit board) shaking out excess
water might be enough, but I usually put a couple drops of
"Jet Dry" (dishwasher rinse agent) in the water, or if I
don't have a rinse agent available, about 1 drop of pure
(not that gentle-to-hands, lotiony stuff) dish detergent in
to redue the water surface tension so it doesn't bead up so
much), in the final rinse.

There are a couple other factors though. The battery and
EPROM are removed. I've washed video cards that had
soldered on EPROMs and managed to do it without problems,
but generally it should be avoided. I have managed to
scramble bios by leaving the EPROM in a motherboard and so I
always remove it when possible (and it usually is).

Now onto your particular situation... what was the system
doing before you had disassembled it to clean it? If it was
already doing the same thing, for all we know there was
already damage and cleaning it wouldn't fix that. I have to
wonder what kind of killer mice they were though, most seem
more interested in food than eating circuit boards, though i
suppose if one tried to use a video card as a trampoline it
could be a problem.

Anyway, was the battery left in? If so, take it out and
measure the voltage. If under 3V, replace it. Either way,
after new battery is installed or current battery out, make
sure the CMOS is cleared by having the battery out while AC
power is disconnected for at least 10 minutes. A dead
battery could cause a problem like you're seeing. Some
boards will post without a battery but others, including
some similar age Asus, won't.

Strip the system down to bare minimums- CPU, video card,
CPU, heatsink/fan, 1 memory module. If it still won't post,
add back the floppy drive and note whether it tries to
access the floppy. If it does, it might be trying to load a
recovery image. Sometimes having a PCI video card (instead
of AGP) will allow seeing on the monitor what is happening).

Somehow I doubt the mice did anything to the power supply,
that unless there was a severe electrical short the PSU and
case would at least suffice to get the system running and
it's more likely the motherboard itself that is the problem.
Then again I don't know the prior state of the system. If
the heatsink was off and it was started without the sink,
then the CPU is probably fried.



Isn't rodent damage covered under most homeowners insurance? If so
salvage the HDD if you can and junk the rest. Let the folks collect on
their homeowners and get a new PC.

--
________
To email me, Edit "blog" from my email address.
Brian M. Kochera
"Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once!"
View My Web Page: http://home.earthlink.net/~brian1951

On Wed, 07 Jun 2006 00:59:46 GMT, Brian K
wrote:


Isn't rodent damage covered under most homeowners insurance? If so
salvage the HDD if you can and junk the rest. Let the folks collect on
their homeowners and get a new PC.

Depends on what kind of coverage and deductible, it might be
as well to just buy the new PC regardless if the system were
old enough that they'd benefit from the performance boost.