Not really sure what is going on here but after about a month my PC has decided it doesn't want to work any longer. What is happening is a lot like when I didn't have the 4-pin motherboard connector inserted. When I go to turn the computer on power is getting through, components come live, but nothing comes up on the screen and I can tell that windows isn't booting because the startup sound doesn't play and tapping the power button turns it off instead of putting it into standby mode.
When I first got my machine going it worked perfectly. Now for the past couple weeks it has had some trouble coming out of standby. On the odd occasion I've had to do a hard-shutdown and reboot the machine. Before today it has always rebooted properly. These problems started around the same time I started messing with the ASUS software trying to get their smartdoctor stuff working.
I don't think it's the GPU because windows would just start normally. I don't think it's the PSU because the components are turn on and the green mobo light turns on. Ram hasn't changed since I built it, haven't messed with it at all so I'm assuming it's the motherboard, but everything was working fine up until now. I might have removed the optical drive while it was in standby several days ago and this might potentially be the first reboot since then, but that wouldn't mess things up now would it?
Any ideas? This is starting to turn into a shitty experience.
To clarify I've already tried booting with everything unplugged in the back except the power/DVI. I've popped the mobo battery in and out. I've tried booting with the HDD unplugged. The mobo doesn't have integrated video so I can't really test it with the GPU unplugged. I'm about to grab the old optical that was in it and put it back in.
After about 40 times of turning it on and off and on etc... I ended up smacking the box around a bit and the next time I turned it on it went through the POST screen and booted up. This still scares me a lot as I'm sure it will happen again, assuming it comes out of standby again is there some software I can run to test the condition of certain components to rule out which hardware is causing the problem?
Anyone? After I bother getting the last of th sandpaper and lap the CPU I'll make sure everything is connected rock solid, even though I have already done so, but I'd hate to do all that work and have to take it all apart again because of a faulty part. I'll definitely have to take a look at the CPU pins before I shave off the warranty.
