Crashed, no display, ????????

[blueonblack]

Here's the short version:

PC was running great, all's good. System specs

MSI 785GTM-E45 motherboard
ATI Phenom II 940 CPU (stock speed)
4GB G-Skill DDR2 800
Samsung Spinpoint F3 500GB SATA HDD
Hitachi Deskstar 500GB SATA HDD
Sapphire HD4870 512MB
Kingwin 1000-watt PSU
Two Lite-On DVD drives
Win7 Ultimate 32-bit

So OK, I installed Magic Disc because I have a desktop publishing program that has 6 discs and I despise having to swap them out over and over again. I have images of each disc and mount them all in virtual drives to eliminate that. I've done it like that for years, but I hadn't installed Magic Disc since I installed Win7. When I did, it installed fine, but when I went to mount a disc the whole system froze. I had to hit the reset button to get it to do anything and then it wouldn't boot. It got as far as the first Windows screen with the spinning circle and the circle would freeze. Nothing I could do could save it.

Luckily I had made an image of that primary partition a few days prior with Macrium Reflect. I installed a new copy of Win7 on a blank hard drive, booted to it and installed Macrium there, used it to restore the drive that locked up. At that point it booted and went to the OS just fine, the backup image evidently installed as it should. But it had done so many off-the-wall things that I decided that a wipe-and-fresh-install was in order.

I formattted the disc that had the image on it and booted to the Win7 setup disc, Win7 installation went just fine until the end. At what I think was the last time it was restarting itself, to finally get to the new fresh shiny clean desktop it wouldn't display. When it went to restart there was no display at all. It had an unusual double-beep and that was it. That's all I've been able to make it do. I've chased my share of computer problems but I am at a loss. Here are the steps I've taken so far:

Remove video card and hook to onboard DVI
Hook to onboard HDMI
Hook to onboard VGA
Remove RAM and try one stick in each slot, one at a time with each stick.
Different PSU
Reset CMOS
Unhook all hard drives
Different (identical) motherboard

Nothing. With the new board I don't get the weird double beep but I also still don't get a display. It's got to be something fairly fundamental, because when it fails to give me a display, I let it sit for a little bit to see if it's going to do anything, and when I press the power button to shut it off it shuts off instantly. No delay at all, like you would get inside an OS.

I am really lost. The only thing I haven't swapped out is my CPU. I've never had one die, is this what that looks like?

[dr.walrus]

No display even at POST level?

[blueonblack]

Nope, not even a POST. The little green "I've got a signal" light on the monitor doesn't even light up.

[Trace]

Try the monitor on another computer.

[dr.walrus]

OK, a few things here to start with, my sincerest apologies if I'm replicating anything you've tried before:

N.B. Your motherboard has an AMI BIOS. 2 short beeps indicates 'POST FAILURE' or 'RAM FAILURE'. 5 beeps would indicate cpu failure. It is worth noting that a POST error would not prevent anything being displayed to screen and the POST error should be shown to the user.

1.) If you're confident you've tested everything but the CPU, this fault could well be the CPU ;). What you've described potentially sounds like it could be overheating related (intermittent behaviour leading to major crashes), and has now fried the CPU. Unlikely as you should get a sort of siren beep sound for overheating
2.) This can happen (components power up with nothing else happening) if your power switch sticks, or you have inadvertantly put a jumper across the power switch, or the power switching mechanism of your motherboard fails. However, this should not generate any sort of beep code, ever.
3.) Strip out the case and re-assemble to rule out any shorts (also seems unlikely if you've replaced mobo and power supply)
4.) Thanks, beep code, for that BIOS insight! When switching the motherboards, it could simply be that the other motherboard doesn't have the speaker turned on (quite feasible), or that you haven't plugged in the internal PC speaker (if these still exist?). People tend to turn these off. This could explain the differences between mobos here. This won't fix your problem, but it may well help you troubleshoot.
5.) Could be a signal output error from your GPU. Try a new cable to your monitor. Again, unlikely due to the myriad of other problems you've had.
6.) Hokay, so, bad news time, your intermittent faults could be one component frying everything else, and you could have fried the components you're using to test with (see this (http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/forum/showthread.php?t=22398) horror story and others...
7.)Your RAM could all be fried, or the RAM control circuitry, or both, if one caused the other. The beep codes bizarrely point towards this.

...in light of the last two points, it's hopefully just your CPU! You tried it without any drives plugged in?

[x88x]

The fact that it turns off immediately when you hit the power switch means that it's stuck in POST for one reason or another. I would agree that it is likely the CPU or RAM that is causing the issue. Do you have another computer that you can test the RAM in?

If that comes up clean, it is likely that the problem is your CPU. Unfortunately, unless you have another compatible CPU, there's not much you can do to confirm this...

[Trace]

I didn't even think it would give a beep code without a CPU

[blueonblack]

Thanks and +rep to all for the advice, I solved it. The culprit seems to have been my DVI cable. Just stopped working all of a sudden. When I tested the VGA and HDMI output as mentioned earlier I was using adapters and this same cable, as it was the only one I had. New cable and bam! Good as new.

The reason I was getting the weird beeps was because I was in the middle of the OS wipe and install and still had the old corrupted OS on another disc. It had stopped the POST to ask me which OS I wanted to boot to. Obviously I couldn't see what it was asking me. :)

Thanks again!

[x88x]

Lol. Sometimes it is the simplest things. :P

[billygoat333]

ahh... stupid cables!! lol

[dr.walrus]

Thanks and +rep to all for the advice, I solved it. The culprit seems to have been my DVI cable. Just stopped working all of a sudden. When I tested the VGA and HDMI output as mentioned earlier I was using adapters and this same cable, as it was the only one I had. New cable and bam! Good as new.

The reason I was getting the weird beeps was because I was in the middle of the OS wipe and install and still had the old corrupted OS on another disc. It had stopped the POST to ask me which OS I wanted to boot to. Obviously I couldn't see what it was asking me. :)

Thanks again!

ahhh, it's always good when it doesn't cost anything to fix :)