Try unplugging your raid drives. If you can then see the bios screen, you will know that it has to do with your raid. If it doesn't and you have multiple sticks of RAM, remove one, start it up and see if it moves further. If no, remove the other and replace the one you took out. If it isn't a bad stick of ram, try unplugging one device at a time, i.e. hard drive, cdrom, media card reader, etc. after unplugging each one, try restarting- if you are still in the same place plug that one item back in and try another. Also, make sure that your fans are all coming on. If they are not, esp. the cpu fan, this could cause it. Make sure it is properly connected and if it still doesn't come on, try another. If that doesn't fix it, you might want to try to reseat your CPU as it might have lost a connection with some of the pin connectors. If all that fails, then try using another power supply to see if that will work. If not, then it is either a motherboard (bios) problem, or it is a cpu problem.

Good luck,
j razz

Oops.
Forgot to tell about the beeps and I will correct in the first post :
no beep at all.

I'm assuming that the PC usually would beep when it started (the motherboard was hooked up to a small speaker inside the case).

If there is no beep, it means the motherboard can't even do its POST (Power-On Self Test). To me this implies a power supply/motherboard/CPU/BIOS issue. I would guess depending on the brand of PC, you can buy a replacement supply for under $50 to swap in.

My system died around New Years, most likely from bad motherboard capacitors. Just for fun, do this: remove the side case from the PC, and peer through the cabling with a flashlight at the large electrolytic capacitors. These look like tiny little coke cans maybe a quarter to half an inch in diameter, and are usually clustered around the CPU/fan assembly. The tops of the cans should be flat. If any of yours look like the superdome, or have stuff oozing from them, or are mounted at a strange angle to the motherboard, then you may also have the dread "bad cap" disease. The cure is a new motherboard or a replacement of the caps.

When the Fry's computer store gets a motherboard return, they hook it up to a generic power supply, a speaker, and a CPU with fan. Within 10 seconds they can tell if the board will POST at all.

Good luck. Let us know the outcome.

I unplugged almost everything that's powered via p.supply: drives (both hard and roms) , Firewire sound card...
Now I noticed that when I start the comp', I can't even open my DVD or CD rom trays, which I usually can do before the system actually boots. Which leads me to think it is indeed the power supply... nope?

You said you unplugged your hard and rom drives, so you won't be able to open them (unless you plugged them back in).

One more thing to try, if you have more than one stick of memory, remove one at a time to see if by chance it is a memory problem.

I had a bad stick recently which would not let my computer boot. Sometimes I got the beeps and sometimes I didn't.

But it sounds like a PSU problem.

Dave T2

Well, I meant "unplugged, tried to booth, then re-plugged" ... and tried again.
I'll have a check at the memory bars now...

Before you replace the power supply, try the following:

1. Make sure the processor is seated and if it has an external connector reseat that as well. Reseat the ram as well or remove some (as long as you have pairs or whatever the system calls for still in there).

2. If this is a clone or home built computer, loosen up the screws holding the motherboard down and lift it slightly, then slide some paper shims under where the screws go. Sometimes the bottom of the mainboard shorts out against the metal case from an improper fit. If that is the case add some fiber washers under the screws. Also see if there are other assembly errors - cables too tight, flat cable folded too much, etc.

3. Hit the NumLock to see if your keyboard is getting a signal.

John

No response from the keyboard.
I unplugged everything ; drives, DVD,CD,FWcard,got the memory bars out and tried again: no beep.
A friend is passing by, now, with a power supply that fits then I'll know, at least, if it's the culprit. My guess is that it indeed is, so far.

If the power supply does not fix it, like I posted earlier; try reseating the CPU and checking that CPU fan is indeed connected properly.

j razz

jrazz : yes. I checked all the fans and everything seems ok. At least, every fan is starting when I press ON. But I figure out these fans are kind of independant from the instructions given by the BIOS. I mean, there's probably a "bypass" that allows these fans to start *before* the rest of the computer starts to be sure there's a supply of air on the different parts to avoid frying something.
Now, maybe the "feedback" signal that tells the CPU the fan is ok is messed up, but my guess is that this "feedback" won't even reach the CPU if the mobo doesn't start in the first place...

Before you try all of the above, if your PC is a couple of years old, try to replace the battery on the motherboard. I've had things similar with the battery being the culprit.

It's not the Power Suply.
It's almost 2 years old so I doubt it's the battery. I got another computer that's 5 years old at least (an AMD 1000MHz) that never had this battery issue...
Ok, back to the case (the "case" inside the case...)

Edit: went to the store and they diagnozed it: mobo dead.
It's still under warranty so ... I'll be waiting. But the price dropped substantially so I bought the last one they had in stock to be able to do my things while waiting the 3 seeks it takes to get a REM. I was also worried about losing some data in this process of trying to booth and always use the "soft shutdown" method to turn the unit off. Just couldn't wait to see the results of this whole messy day.
Plugged the new mobo ... and everything's fine so far. Didn't lose any data. Now That is the good news of the day. I can sleep thight and keep movin on tomorrow... hooo-weee....

Congrats.

With all the complexity of these things, I often marvel that they work at all.

Was it bad capacitors on the old motherboard, or something else?

The board is gone to Asus and they will figure it out I suppose.
But I must say that during winter here, we heat the place and there's lrug everywhere in my place. I suspect static electricity but how the heck would it go to the board and mess it without messing memory, drives, cards,etc?
Otherwise, I can't answer the "whys and whens".
But I have to re-do my Raid array so now, I'm burning everything I want to save before going through this. My system works probably because my drives are intact so they run WinXP but my Raid has to be redone because the system won't see the other drives (which are intact too: I put those in my ext. drive enclosure and checked them via FireWire and everything's ok.
I'll probably have to rinstall XP too since I highly suspect that re-doing my Raid will require re-create partitions, format, etc...

It's something very uncommon for this board, I must say. I've never seen complaints about this and it's the same at the store where I bought it (Asus P4P800E-Deluxe).

And what's VERY bizarre is that it made it two days before going dead. That morning, I simply re-checked my connections inside the case (hard drives connections, that is) and when I re-booted it, it worked. So after all, maybe it's not static electricity but something else cause I guess if it was the case, the board would have gone RIP right on the spot... 1000 volts discharge on 5 volts components is kind of drastic.

BTW, all your feedback was VERY appreciated guys.
In these moments, the more heads the better and since my knowledge of this kind of problems tends to go away as soon as the problems are resolved, I really appreciate.
Thanks again.

Did you check for shorts against the case from the underside of the board as I suggested above? If it WAS shorting out it may happen to the new one as well unless you change the spacing.
John

Yep. There's enough space between case and board (I'd say 1/4 inch). In fact, everything's practically new inside and outside this tower. This has a double wall construction so even if I displace the comp', it couldn't squeeze enough I guess to the point of shorting the board, same with pushing against the mobo side: it would maybe go up to the second sheet of aluminium but to short the board, one must really push hard to bend all these layers... (Thermaltake Tsunami tower)