My poorly PC

[Dante Reims]

Hey guys and gals!

It's been a while since i've been online due to my power supply blowing up a while back. I got it replaced with a new Seasonic 500w one but then discovered that my motherboard also bit the dust along with my old PSU. So i've spent my pennies on getting some new stuff which I thought would sort out my PC's problems but 'lo and behold, it's still got the 'ump about something.

my new system is like so:

Gigabyte GA-M57SLi-S4 Motherboard
2x 1GB Corsair DDR2 800 Dimms
AMD Athlon X2 4400+ Skt AM2 CPU
ATI Sapphire Radeon X800 GTO 512MB DDR2 PCI-E Graphics Card
500 watt Seasonic PSU

I was hoping some of you helpful Scouts might be able to share some knowledge and help me fix whatever the problem is?

Basically what's happening is nothing. lol. I turn the PC on and nothing happens. Fans spin and the power light on the front of the PC comes on but it doesn't go into the BIOS and I get no beeps at all. I've tried moving the memory into all the available slots to see if that helps but nothing happened, i've checked to make sure everything was seated properly and plugged in the right way. I've tried clearing the CMOS, but nothing has worked so far. About the only thing i've got left to try is to run the motherboard barebones and out of the case to make sure that there's nothing sorting it out. I'll be trying that later.

If anyone knows any particular reason my hardware won't work together or knows of anything else I can try please let me know!

Thanks a lot for your help and I hope to be back online soon!

Dante.

EDIT: Was just thinking, and it may sound a bit stupid now I come to think of it, but would having a NVidia chipset on the motherboard and an ATI graphics card cause any particular problems like this?

[Tanin'iver BlindDragon]

Hi Dante

Sorry to hear you are having trouble - it sounds like a tricky one to diagnose too. Ideally you need other components available too, since it's possible the CPU was killed when the PSU died as well, or is it a new one?

Anyway, the ATI graphics card on an nVidia chipset won't be a problem - I saw a long and detailed article on the subject previously, which was actually trying to investigate if you got any extra performance from pairing them nvidia+nvidia or AMD+AMD, and they didn't mention any problems with the reverse.

[Dante Reims]

The Motherboard, CPU, RAM and PSU are all new.

Thanks for clearing up the ATI/nvidia issue ... I didn't think it would cause such a big problem as this but ti's nice to know that it doesn't matter.

As for my computer i've narrowed it down to the problem lyingwith either the Motherboard or the Graphics card. I suppose it's possible the my knackered old PSU could have damaged the graphics card too when it had it's tantrum, but i'l need to borrow or buy another one to be able to test that theory. If I can rule out the graphics card then it's definately the motherboard.

All assistance is greatly appreciated

[Zalis]

A motherboard issue is more likely to whack your system than a graphics card one.

[Dante Reims]

Well, after trying a different graphics card which my brother-in-law lent to me in my pc which worked I decided to splash the cash on a new one for myself which also worked! But now I have a different problem .... *sigh* ...... it seems that when my PSU blew up it damaged just about every component in my PC aside from the case, and as a result i'm having to pretty much replace everything. So next month i'll get a new hard drive and DVD drive and I should hopefully be good to go! I'm not going to bother replacing the sound card just yet as the motherboard has onboard sound which will do for now.

[Anomander]

Dante,

I suffered more or less the same 2 weeks ago. So when I called the help desk of my hardware supplier (Dell) to get some advice and when I explained that the Power Supply smelled burned he told me right away that in most cases more components are damaged. If a computer is still under warranty (unlike mine of course ) they pretty much replace most major components or just send another PC. He advised me to take out the hard drive and install it in the new computer I had to buy.
So I bought a HP with Vista, broad screen and by now have most things working again. Because I missed the gw.dat file I have spent serious time going into all outposts and areas to get the downloads and I had to rebuild most of my mostly used Build Templates.
Now I still have to take out the old harddisk and try to connect it to the new PC. The Dell guy told me I would notice right away if that was damaged too: if the bios doesn't recognize it at startup after I connected it properly, its damaged too. In that case I have to recover my backup from an external harddrive from some months ago. Replacing components on a 4 year old computer mostly turns out with more trouble and frustrations at higher cost. Fortunately I don't have to save months for every 100 euros, but I can imagine this is extremely annoying for others.
Good Luck!

[Flossie The Sheep]

anomander said:

Because I missed the gw.dat file I have spent serious time going into all outposts and areas to get the downloads

Just a quick tip for this, if you use the "-image" command at the end of your GW shortcut it will download all content.

A normal installation would give "C:\Program Files\Guild Wars\Gw.exe" -image

The best way to do this is to go to your GW folder and right click the Gw.exe file and select "Create Shortcut". Then right click the new shortcut and select properties and put the "-image" command at the end of the existing target location (without the quotes) and click OK.

Then double click the new shortcut and it'll download all the files you need and exit the client. Once it's done, just double click your old shortcut to launch GW.

And Dante, I know how frustrating that can be, something similar happened to me a while ago and the aggravation of the whole thing is enough to make you tear your hair out. Fortunately I was able to salvage most of my data by swapping controller PCBs on the Hard Drives, but it's still horribly time-consuming and frustrating to have to build a new PC, install everything, get everything set up again...

My heart goes out to you, and good luck

[Pass The Towel]

Just adding to Flossie's post, the wiki has a page of all known flags you can give GW.

wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Command_line_arguments

Sorry to hear that Dante, glad you're finally getting closer to sorting it all out!

[Dante Reims]

anomander said:

Dante,

I suffered more or less the same 2 weeks ago.

The BIOS doesn't recognise my harddrive at startup and my DVD drive is also playing up. Just a flickering light and the tray won't open. I've already been scouting out new hardware to buy for next month so hopefully next payday i'll be good to go! I built the computer myself so I don't have a supplier to call .... except me ....... but that would be weird ........

flossie said:

And Dante, I know how frustrating that can be, something similar happened to me a while ago and the aggravation of the whole thing is enough to make you tear your hair out.

I would if I had any hair! ;D

Thanks for the help and well wishes Scouts! Hopefully it won't be too long before I can get back online again.

Dante.

[Dante Reims]

Success! My computer is fixed at last! A power surge blew out the whole of my system so I had to replace everything. I got the last of the bits I needed the other day so I have just been restoring my computer to it's former glory loaded up with all sorts of junk. So hopefully i'll be back online within a day or so or possibly even tonight! Hooray!

Now ... if only I can remember how to play the game .......... or did I even know in the first place? ..... questions, questions .....

Dante.

[Lee Roth]

Will Teach U ,Dante Just don't forget your account for the game

[Thalion Orbdrin]

Good to hear you'll be back, your Luxon armor has been missed.

[Pass The Towel]

I'm sure what Thalion meant to say is that you're aware of the returning from absence fee, right? There's also the guild hall dues, and equipment fees. Also, you need to make up your share of the cape laundry duties.

Welcome back. ;D

[Thalion Orbdrin]

What Thalion meant was to salvage the Elite Luxon armor... Thal pretty sure it'll fetch a few more Ks and some jade for Shing Jea boardwalk weekend.

Talking in third person fun! ;D

[Stormy Eve]

It's nice to see you back Dante!
You have a weekend to overtake us. Not a day more!
Have fun

[Dante Reims]

Sorry Thal ... I went through a lot (and was helped alot) to obtain my loverly armour so it's not getting salvaged anytime soon ..... Maybe you could make a new Character who only talks in the third person?

Thanks for the well wishes, it's good to be back after all this time even though was actually quite nice to have a break.

[Lee Roth]

Tooo long Break ,Dante ,tooo long ¬
Welcome back!
( Do U still need that map piece ,I wanted to give U instead of Stormy ? have several of each

[Dante Reims]

lol ... yeah I think I do still need that map piece actually Lee .... thanks a lot for remembering after all this time

[paleblade]

Welcome back Dante, it was good to see you on last night. Now we gotta catch you up with all the updates/nerfs and changes. Mind you, its a pretty good weekend to come back, as Anet has the Chinese New Year celebrations on now! I hope you kept a piggy from last year, your supposed to get something for it this year.

[Dante Reims]

I didn't get a piggy last year .... I was actually looking for one before my computer broke but funnily enough I couldn't get one ..... typical.