[commie]

Ok guys, here we go.

I have an Asus A8N SLI Deluxe. A while ago, the chipset fan (northbridge I suppose) died, which is a common problem for this motherboard. Being a novice, I put it off and put it off, until my computer just konked out, giving me a long beep followed my 2 short beeps.

This warning indicates anything from overheating to improperly installed equipment.

Now, I assume it was the chip overheating, because I saw that the heatsink that was attached to the dead fan actually fell off of the motherboard.

So, I bought a new chipfan, affixed it to the heatsink, and reattached the heatsink with its new fan on my motherboard.

This worked, or so I thought.

Programs, specifically my counterstrike and nero burning tool will not work properly. CS starts, but when I go to join a server, it gets stuck, at which point I can't alt-tab out of the program and have to reboot. Nero pretends to start, but freezes after its splash screen and doesn't do anything. The processes for both of these programs continue to run, but I cannot force them close.

Now, I was told by another Geek that the issue could be caused either by a short or an overheating. Now, with the heatsink, new fan, arctic silver, and casing off, there is NO way the chip is overheating. When I ran speedfan, the program temped the chip at 48 C.

So, the only conclusion is that this is a short, but from WHERE?

One other important point is that when I took off the heatsink to replace it onto my mobo, I noticed that the black top for the chipset was starting to flake off, leaving small parts of the chipset exposed. I thought, hmm, this must be the short, and I covered it with electrical tape to see if it'd work. It didn't.

Basically, my computer turns on sometimes, but doesn't other times. I've gotten the thing to turn on and stay on for hours at a time, but it's so inconsistent that I can't notice any real patterns other than what I've described. When it crashes after use, everything freezes, and then the screen shuts off and the computer sometimes restarts.

PLEASE SOMEONE HELP ME BEFORE I DIE FROM HEART FAILURE.

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You have fried your motherboard. There is no sense in doing anything else other than replacing the motherboard with a new one. Motherboards are usually not repairable.

SRX660

[SRX660]

You have fried your motherboard. There is no sense in doing anything else other than replacing the motherboard with a new one. Motherboards are usually not repairable.

SRX660

[commie]

What about my testimony makes you think that my motherboard is fried?

I would rather not replace the motherboard if I can help it, cuz that is expensive and I'm poor. Do you really think that it's the only possibility?

Thanks for your reply by the way.

[Tyger]

There are millions of microscopic transistors in you chipset and only a few of them need to fail to cause strange things to happen. If even one fails in a strategic part of the chipset module it can cause the machine not to function at all.

[The Skeptic]

The chipped flakes are, probably, old, dried, thermal paste applied between the chip and heatsink.

Please try the following:

1: Try to clear the BIOS by doing this:Disconnect the power cable from the back of the computer. Open the side cover and carefully take out the cmos battery (looks like a silvery button). Keep it out for about 15 minutes. Reinstall and reboot. You will probably get a checksome error or some other message. If you do, enter BIOS and set time and date, save the new values and let the computer boot. There are computers in which other keys have to be used to enter BIOS. You can find the correct key when looking at the screen right after pressing the start button. Look for what key you have to press to enter setup.

2: Download Stability Test from here. Unzip the file and read the Read file to understand what this test is all about. Run the test for few hours. If your computer doesn't crash we'll continue from there. If it does, then I am afraid that the motherboard is finished.

[commie]

Ok, so.

The "short" may have been caused by a faulty pci-e slot. Apparantly the vid card and the slot weren't making a good enough connection, which was why the freezings and the reboots were so intermittent. There's a rainstorm here, so I'm going to turn off my computer, but it seems that it's fixed for now. Now I just have to figure out why my programs aren't operating like they were before the crash.

I'll report again tonight to see if your test came up with anything. Thanks again!

[commie]

Well, so far the computer hasn't shorted out, but I have some other issues that I'd like to pick your brains over:

My dvd rw drive is not being properly recognized by Windows XP Pro. I've plugged 2 different DVD roms in to the ide cable and both have some up misspelled in the hardware list. I've switched the cable to see if it was that, and to my knowledge the connection to the motherboard seems ok.

Is it possible that this is connected to my Counter-strike error where my computer sometimes runs the program successfully and sometimes doesn't? (I can almost guarantee that the cd issue is a part of my Nero problem)

Any ideas what happened?

(I will be running the test tonight to see if anything bad happens.)

Thanks all for the help!

Edited by commie, 31 May 2008 - 09:56 PM.

[The Skeptic]

Have you cleared the cmos?.

[commie]

Ok, so here's an update so everyone knows what to suggest in future questions:

It turns out the problem was three moderately unrelated issues.

1) My computer kept restarting because time took its toll on my pci-e slot. Gravity was pulling and probably finally severed the connection between my video card and my mobo. I simply moved my video card to the other pci-e slot.

2) My Counterstrike wasn't working because of the router settings on my computer. Apparently, with the computer rebooting, the router kept assign it different IPs, which rendered my IP allowances (virtual servers and port forwarding) useless. So that program froze whenever I tried to join.

3) I apparantly caused a short in my secondary IDE slot on my mobo. I have yet to fix this problem, but I have also yet to reboot my CMOS because I'm afraid to. I will of course tomorrow because I have 2 daus off to deal with the consequences, but hopefully all is well after that.


The moral of the story is: If I had listened to the first person that said my mobo was fried, I would've been out $150 at least. ALWAYS TROUBLESHOOT BEFORE SUGGESTING GETTING NEW EQUIPMENT.

I appreciate all the help, and will update after I reboot the CMOS. Good night!