Hi everyone,

About a week ago, my computer shut off for apparently no reason and would not power back on. My first thought was that it was the power supply, so a few days later I replaced my 350w with a 550w, and then the computer powered up fine. The first time it powered up, however, it started to load Windows and then locked up. I reset and tried again. Same thing. Eventually, it wouldn't even get that far; I would try to turn it on, and all I would get was a series of beeps, followed by a single extremely long beep that didn't end until I turned the thing off again. I reset the bios, took out the ram to test it, removed all of the unneeded components from the computer, and even took out the board itself and put it on a sheet of cardboard to make sure it wasn't a grounding issue, all to no avail. Finally, I changed the CPU front side bus to 100 MHz from 133 MHz (which is the correct setting), and the thing powered up. Unfortunately, it doesn't recognize any hard drive I put in (I've tried several), and when I hook up the CD-ROM, it once again refuses to boot. I've noticed something else that's a bit curious as well; when I change the FSB back to 133 Mhz, the hard drive gets intermittent power, spinning up and stopping again. It's done this with several hard drives.

So...any idea what this could be? When the PSU blew, could it have taken the mobo or processor with it? I have a DFI AD77 Infinity board, revision A+, an Athlon XP 2400 processor, and an Antec 550w PSU. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks!

Does it still give any beeps on POST?

Only when I set the FSB to 133. It gives me two long beeps. It used to keep beeping endlessly after those two initial beeps, but it no longer does that.

Confused yet?

Update - it beeps now no matter what I do. Could it possibly be the RAM? It would make sense that something was happening when I switched the FSB to 133 if the RAM was failing, wouldn't it? But since it's not loading at all now, I don't know what to think.

The beeps are trying to tell you something

depending on your BIOS type: check out this post:

beep code list

Okay, I was just being stupid and didn't notice that the video card was slightly raised out of the slot. That's what the beeps were indicating. That didn't solve the overall problem, however. My computer is not beeping anymore. When I set the FSB to 133 it doesn't even post, and when it is at 100 it says that my hard drive cannot be detected, although the text was garbled, calling the secondary hard drive a "hard dive," so I am hesitant to trust its opinion.

If I leave the computer on long enough, I can hear the power coming on to components on the computer, and stopping again. The key to diagnosing this problem has to lie with that intermittent power.

I tested my RAM with the free Microsoft utility, and it found no problems. So it looks like it's becoming more and more likely that the board and/or processor is the culprit.

Hmmm...okay, well, obviously this has stumped quite a few people...are there any diagnostic programs out there that I can use to test the board and/or CPU from a DOS prompt?

Have you checked the LED's here:

The AD77 Infinity also features a basic four LED POST diagnostic function (end of PCI slot 3 below ~ LED 6-3).

http://www.3dvelocity.com/reviews/ad77inf/ad77inf_2.htm

Yeah. According to the LEDs, everything is fine. I went out tonight and replaced the board...it's still not working. Of course, there's no way it could be that simple for me. It's never that simple. So, it looks as though the cpu is bad. I think I'm just going to suck it up and buy a new one tomorrow.

I think I might just use that board as a clay pigeon later to blow off some steam. If there's anything I've learned from all of this, it's to never buy a power supply from a company I've never heard of.