# A mystery!



## nooby (Aug 21, 2008)

Hey everyone,
wondered if someone could help me with a problem I had recently. I'm fairly new to pc building, and know the basics. I self built a system last year, and have upgraded in between, currently:

Intel E8400 Wolfdale at 3.0 GHZ (stock speed) w/ arctic pro 7 cooler
J & W IP35 pro motherboard
2 gb g skill 6400 ram + 2 gb geil 6400, both running at 800 mhz
WD 250 gb sata hdd (not sure of exact code)
Leadtek 8800gt zl oc 512 gfx card
all in a pretty old arctic cooling case

now, to the problem... i recently overclocked the processer to 3.6ghz, and initially had no problems with it. I didn't increase the voltage, and kept the ram speed the same. Did some testing with prime95 and a few hours of crysis, and the max cpu temp i found was 60 oC, with the mb reaching 40 oC. I took this to indicate everything was fine.
A few days later, I put the computer to sleep (having done so before with no issues) but on waking it crashed, although restarted fine. I was slightly concerned, and as I was hopefully getting a new case the next day, I went back into the bios and removed the overclock, setting it back to stock speeds on everything. When I rebooted, the system failed to post, and hasnt since.
When I switch it on now, everything (fans, lights etc) engages, but nothing appears on the monitor. This lasts for about 10 seconds, when the HDD light on the case lights up, and then the computer switches off, to come back on a few seconds later without the HDD's engaging at all. 
This had me stumped, so i reset the cmos, removed everything and refitted it all, tried it with only 1 ram stick, with a different hdd plugged in, all with the same result. I bought the new case and psu in case that was it, but no improvement, and I tried all of the parts in a different motherboard, with the same effect. Short of sacrificing a chicken over it, Im a bit stuck of what to do. I havn't got a spare processor or gfx card to try, and obv its too expensive to replace them if i dont know they're broke.
Can anyone please help?


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## 1 g0t 0wn3d (Jan 31, 2007)

give reseting the cmos a try


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## nooby (Aug 21, 2008)

Yep, have done that with no effect. Additional to the above, when the system powers up the debug led display on the back of the motherboard doesn't light up, which before it did. I don't know if thats significant or not...


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## 1 g0t 0wn3d (Jan 31, 2007)

disconnect the harddrives and see if you can boot to bios


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## nooby (Aug 21, 2008)

yep, just tried that, with no luck. Also tried the dual bios boot thing my motherboard has, and that didnt work either. Guessing its not looking good... I'll try to get hold of some alternative components and swap them out to test.


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## 1 g0t 0wn3d (Jan 31, 2007)

hmm try it with one stick of ram (try them all)


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