Help i have a problem (decased pc)

[truz206]

well i just got a cocktail cabinet that i was putting my pc into today but realized that the tower was too big to fit in the cocktail cabinet. So i figured i would jsut take it out of its caes and put the motherboard in the cabinet.

Well i got everything out of the case and then hooked everything back up and now the pc wont turn on. This sucks. The light on the motherboard lights up when i plug it in so i am getting power to the pc so i dont know why it isnt turning on.

I think it may have something to do with the way the powerswitch is wired. I really dont know though. This computer is an old hp pavilion which has a p4 1.3ghz and an asus p4t motherboard. I have no idea what is wrong and why it wont power up. I dont think it is the powersupply because when i plug it in the mother light lights up

If anyone could please help me here i am desperate, as this really sucks. Hopefully any of you will have some input, thanks.

[whammoed]

Is it one of those that has a switch on the case to tell if it is open that doesn't allow you to start?  Just a shot in the dark.  Also are you sure you have the power button to the motherboard hooked up correctly?  Are you using the switch/harness that came with the case?

[NinjaEpisode]

Does the motherboard beep when you turn it on?  If so what's the sequence of beeps, i.e short beep, long beep, short beep or long beep, short beep, short beep, etc....

Also, make sure you have any peripheral cards seated tightly in the motherboard.

Make sure memory is seated tightly.

If you have a floppy drive, make sure you have the cable connected properly.  (Red Line on the side of the ribbon cable connects to pin 1).  Do the same with the harddrive, cd-rom etc.

Regarding the power switch, if you're using the harness from the PC, make sure it's connected to the proper area of the board.

[tcleary]

maybe you hooked up the switch wrong?  the motherboard needs something to tell it to turn on, so hooking up the power switch is essential.  does the power supply fan come on?  all the motherboard light does is tell you that the power supply is plugged in and connected to the motherboard.  

if the power supply is coming on, then the usual culprits are ram, vid card, and processor, or possibly the motherboard.  all 4 of those need to be working to get a display and at least get into the bios.

[truz206]

i cant even get the thing to turn on, that the problem. I hit the switch for power and it wont turn on. Nothing comes on, fan, cpu, vid car or anything so it is impossible for me to hear bios beeps cuase it isnt even turning on.

Myabe something is wrong witht eh switch but i didnt touch the wiring at all, i just unpluged the connector from the mother board.

God this sucks

[NinjaEpisode]

Sounds like a switch problem to me.

Also, that board, the P4T does have Chassis Intrusion jumper on it.  If you're not using that, you need to jumper it according to the user manual. (Pg. 34)

User manual is here: http://www.asus.com/support/download/item.aspx?ModelName=P4T&Type=Manual

BIOS Beep Codes on pg. 41 of that manual if you get it that far.

[truz206]

how can i properly set up the switch on my computer. Right now coming out of the motherboard is a couple wires for leds and such and then there is the 2 wires for the power switch. On is and and one is black and they go into the switch which on the one end has 6 pin connectors (3 ontop of another 3) and then the other side is the push button.

I cannot for the life of me figure out why this computer wont power on at all. Everything seems identical as to when it was in the case. Some of the connectors from the power supply might not be plugged into the same devices order as the first were but that wouldnt really matter would it?>

Some pleae help me try to get this thing to power on. Is there some sort of other way to turn the pc on from the motherboard?

[whammoed]

Well considiering it is a pavilion with asus mb I wouldn't rule out that the motherboard just happened to go bad at a very ironic time.  I have had two at work behave like that.  No boot, no beep codes, no nothing.  New motherboard fixed the problem.  Take the time to put it back in its case to narrow down the possibilities.

[truz206]

this is awful man, i fina.lly get a cabinet of my own and something like this has to happen. I swear i have the worst luck with stuff like this.

I really hope i can fix this as the pc was all setup  and ready to go with a mamewah installation as i had it setup just the way i wanted. Now this happens. Crap i really need to fix this as i can really justify buying a whole new mb or pc. Crap this is just my luck.

[MonitorGuru]

Unless you gave the board a HUGE bolt of static zap (and at the absolute wrong place), I'm willing to bet one of 2 things are causing your problem, based on what others said. Even when zapped, i've not seen boards not give any sign of power up life. They will beep or start booting only to lock up later typically.


1) The case had an intrusion detection switch and refuses power up unless the appropriate jumpers are crossed on the motherboard

2) You didn't reconnect the power switch correctly.

Since we're talking P4's here and not classic Pentium1's, we're dealing with ATX power supplies, so the switch is a simple single pole, single throw momentary switch offering all of 5 volts maximum through it (unlike old computers where you physically switched the entire 120 volt load through a Click on/Click off, not momentary switch.

Therefore follow the leads from the switch back to the motherboard. Double check the leads are connecting to the correct 2 jumpers.  If they are, remove them, and then CAREFULLY take the tip of a ball point pen, or other similar metal object (small screwdriver, tweezers, etc..) and touch exactly both of the pins (and no others) that the power switch is supposed to connect to on the motherboard header.  If it doesn't turn on after touching for a half second, and you're absolutely sure they're the right pins, then it isn't the power switch at fault.  Double check the markings on the board against the manual against an online description, sometimes these boards are not marked correclty, and I presume you had to disconnect all of these to remove it from your case.

Look for a jumper labeled (or see your doc) about a Chassis Intrusion detection jumper.  If there is one, see if it's supposed to be jumpered or not in order to work (normally open or normally closed).  Make it the opposite of what it is now, then attempt to do the power again.

I'm betting one of these two things are your problem.  If not, double check that the entire ATX power cable is secure in the socket on the motherboard.  Ensure your ram is fully seated.  Pull out ALL card other than 1 stick of ram and your video card.  Try booting it then.

Also, if you could post a picture of the jumper block where you've reconnected all the switches to, we could look at it and see if you've messed something up as well.


Also, are you getting ANY sign of life? Is the fan on the CPU spinning for even a moment when you press the switch?   Check your PCI/AGP cards.. They normally have a silver piece of metal sticking down below the motherboard that slides into a socket in the case. If you have the board flat against a board, then you may not be putting the cards in the slot fully and they may be shorting out or at the very least not connecting and it is possible (though not likely) this is preventing a power up.

Are there any leads/switches/buttons you left in the case that are no longer connected to the board?

[cbmeeks]

One other thing to remember is that P4's use TWO power cords to the mobo.

Don't forget the small, square 12-volt cord.  But then again, if it's an HP, it may not have that.

Unplug EVERYTHING except the video card, ram, keyboard, and PSU.  Plug in the monitor and see if that works.  Then try installing harddrives, CD's, etc one at a time until you find the one that causes it not to boot.

I doubt it's fried.  Unless you did something stupid like pull out a video card while the machine was running (I had a customer do that once).

cb

[truz206]

AHHHHHHHHHH !!!! Monitro Guru!! I love you. It just powered up. The power switch was the problem.

I took a small screw driver and connected the two pins and it powered up right into right there. Everything seems fine and xp is just checking all the new hardare as everything was disconnected. It seems as if one of the wires that was going to the mb got looses and came out of its connector, it looks to be screwed.

Thank you so much everyone for your help, monitor guru you are a life saver.

I just have one more question. How can i wire up a new power button as i dont think i can reuse the old one, it looks shot.

Thank you so much guys!!!

[cbmeeks]

Why not use an arcade button?  All you need is for the two pins to make contact.

Wire two wires to the microswitch...should be interesting.  :-)

[truz206]

hmmph one problem now that i have got the computer running is that it boots up and operates alot slower than before. Do i have to install all my drivers again and such? Is this normal for the computer to be slower as i just had the whole thing disconnected?

[truz206]

wow it is running slow as sin...


Ill open the control panel and it has the searching flash light looking for all the icons. WTF is going on. It cant be the hard drive, The computer may be a bit old but i just got this hd a couple of months ago. I fired up mame as well and ms. pacman was running like a slide show as where the mamewah menus.

Anyone know what the problem might be?

[whammoed]

open up task manager and look at the cpu time and processes...is anything eating up all the processor speed?

[truz206]

i have to go to work right now so ill be back later but i just noticed something. I accidently had the HD sitting upside down, and i think that is bad for it. So i immediately turned the pc off and turned it right side up.

Is it bad to have the HD not in the correct position it was meant to be. I hope i didnt mess anything up, thats why i quicklly fixeds the situation. Maybe thats why the pc was searching for files so long. Oh well ill check it when i get back.

[whammoed]

I don't think it matters...I have a usb hard drive that ends up in all sorts of positions and it is always happy.  I could be wrong...

[greywolf22]

i have to go to work right now so ill be back later but i just noticed something. I accidently had the HD sitting upside down, and i think that is bad for it. So i immediately turned the pc off and turned it right side up.

Is it bad to have the HD not in the correct position it was meant to be. I hope i didnt mess anything up, thats why i quicklly fixeds the situation. Maybe thats why the pc was searching for files so long. Oh well ill check it when i get back.

It doesn't matter, HD should work either way

[Effayy]

I took a small screw driver and connected the two pins and it powered up right into right there. Everything seems fine and xp is just checking all the new hardare as everything was disconnected. It seems as if one of the wires that was going to the mb got looses and came out of its connector, it looks to be screwed.

Since you mentioned that after turning your PC back on, the hardware was being recognized and drivers loaded up by WinXP, I'd be tempted to speculate that your slowdown could be caused to improper (or outdated) drivers being loaded on your system.

It may seem like a pain in the rear, but make sure that you get and install the latest drivers for your system from HP. If you have a custom vidcard or anything else, make sure to download and install the proper drivers from the 3rd parties involved as well.  I have a feeling that the main culprit is either the vidcard, the network card (Sounds silly, but solved a P4 running at the speed of a 486 DX2/66 here at work), or possibly a motherboard component.

Another quick thing to do is check for issues in your Device Manager (Start -- Control Panel -- System -- Hardware Tab -- Device Manager).  Check for unknown devices (usually has a question mark icon beside), and warnings (Exclamation Point Icon).

At this point that's about all I can suggest.  It's tough to troubleshoot issues like this without getting my own grubby paws on the system itself.

- FA

[Chris]

Could it be slowing down due to heat?  Removing a PC from its case completely changes the thermal flow, and overheating processors will slow down to reduce heat...

[MonitorGuru]

Oh no... you turned the drive upside down?  Now you went and made all the molassas they use at the bottom of the drive to help shield it from shock get all over the platters and make the heads move much slower when you flipped it upside down.            

Just kidding.

First, you're welcome. Glad I could help make it work.

Second, you may have simply stretched the wire when you were removing the original switch.  It could be broken either at the switch OR at the jumper connection.  To see, simply cut the wires off next to the switch, strip them to see some wire, then reconnect the other end to the jumpers and then see if touching both wires together starts the computer.  If so, then try to reattch to the switch on the terminals they were on.  If it works, just solder in place and you're done.  if not, the contacts on that side of the switch may be bad.  If so, you can use the other side of the switch.  Looking at the bad drawing below, if the original switch was connected at position 1 and 2, reconnect the wires (either way) at positions 4 and 5 and try it.  That should fix it.  Otherwise, as others posted, simply wire the wires to an arcade button microswitch to turn on your computer from the outside

1  2  3
4  5  6


Third- Running a drive upside down.   Tecnically that is not advised due to the heat not moving correctly, but newer drives are definitely more able to handle strange mounts. MANY computers (e.g. almost all Dell computers) mount the drive vertically instead of horizontally.  Whenever I test drives on my workbench, I run them upside down to ensure I dont accidentially short out the circuit board due to some metal shavings on the counter/etc..   I wouldn't run them forever upside down, but no, you shouldn't harm it by doing so.  Hard drives live in much worse conditions (like old ReplayTV's that have them encased in foam and metal with NO FAN!)

Fourth--Your slowness.  It is possible to windows reloading the drivers in a different order, selecting basic functionality over optimized, etc..  Or as the previous poster suggested... It is possible you don't have adequate cooling any longer and your CPU is throttling down to a slower speed to protect itself from literally burning up.  You can verify this by downloading a CPU frequency calculator (like CPUID from www.cpuid.com) and have it check the speed.  It is ALSO possible that during your move, you caused the BIOS to clear and it set the CPU and memory speeds to a low default. This is less likely since you have an HP which is usually set at a specific frequency as the only one you can select from, but many OEM motherboards let you select speeds and default to a low setting if you accidentally reset the bios by loosing power to the board or letting the battery fall out or accidentially jumpering the clear cms jumpers.

Good luck. let us know!

[truz206]

wow something actually went right for me. I came home from work last night and fired up the computer and its working as fast as it was before i decased.

I took out a network pci card i didnt need and some of the front usb ports they were plugged in but not hooked up properly so they didnt work.

Then when i powered it on everything worked great.  Dont know if removing that stuffed helped but all is well, but i reinstalled all my drivers just to be safe.


One more thing also. Now dont scoff at me when i tell you that this is a side by side cabinet from dreamarcades.com but i am having problems with the joysticks. I cannot get them to register diagonal movements. Like in a fighting game it is impossible to jump diagonally forward. Its really weird. So i went into the mame control settings to check it out and all the primary directions were set to the right spots but the diagonals seemed weird. They were all mapped to letters like I, M and others that i dont quite remember. Shouldnt they just say  "up+right" by default since i mapped the primary directions already.

I dont know what the problem is with that, i emailed support last night but it was late and was thinking maybe you guys could answer my question quicker. thanks

[truz206]

it seems like the diagonals only work in one place, it wont register anything in between which makes it a pain in most of the games. You have to push the stick in just the right direction to get it to register the diagonal. It shouldnt be like this, is there anything i can do to fix it?



If it helps this thing runs off of an ipac.

[truz206]

can anyone help on why it is so hard for my joysticks to register diagonal movements?

[truz206]

i think that maybe these stick are set on a 4 way mode of some sort. They use x-arcade parts and x-arcade does in fact have a way to switch from 8 way to 4 way.

My only question is, with a 4 way would it still be possible to sometimes r egister a diagonal joystick push. Cause sometimes i can get the sticks to register a diagonal but it is hard to do.

[Chris]

My only question is, with a 4 way would it still be possible to sometimes r egister a diagonal joystick push. Cause sometimes i can get the sticks to register a diagonal but it is hard to do.

With an X-Arcade in 4-way mode, yes.

[truz206]

i think this may be the problem cause i have an old single player x-arcade that is on 8-way mode and when i rotate the stick it sounds a lot different than the two on this panel.

The only problem is, is that i am looking inside the panel now and comparing it to this chart.

http://www.x-arcade.com/service/open.shtml

And it doesnt look like that. The first thing after the c clip is a big whit plastic square that hits the corners of the coresponding direction your pressing.

Also after looking inside my own x-arcade they are very different looking , so i dont know what i would have to do to switch to 8 way mode on the control panel. damn im confused.

[truz206]

well i have been looking at the inside of my panel while moving the stick in the diagonals and it is not able to press both the up and right buttons (if i were to want diagonal up/right) at the same time. Its like the switch isnt big enough to reach and you almost have to force to get it to register both presses to produce a diagonal key push.

Also upon looking inside the switches around the joystick say cherry on them and not x-gaming like the ones on my x-arcade solo.  

If anyone acan help me i would greatly appreciate it. thanks

[Chris]

And it doesnt look like that. The first thing after the c clip is a big whit plastic square that hits the corners of the coresponding direction your pressing.

That sounds like a Happ Ultimate rather than an X-Arcade stick.  The Ultimate should be 8-way... hmm...

[truz206]

yea i dont think the sticks are x-arcade as they look different on the inside and say cherry on them.

But the problem is that you have to push really hard to get a diagonal to register as it wont reach both buttons otherwise. Does anyone know how to remedy this, its near impossible to play anything that isnt a 4 way game.

[Chris]

yea i dont think the sticks are x-arcade as they look different on the inside and say cherry on them.

But the problem is that you have to push really hard to get a diagonal to register as it wont reach both buttons otherwise. Does anyone know how to remedy this, its near impossible to play anything that isnt a 4 way game.

Happ Ultimates are generally poor sticks.  You may just want to replace the sticks.  Try http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=13718&item=6112196141&rd=1 .

--Chris

[truz206]

hmm maybe, i will go that route but right now im just looking for a remedy to get these sticks working normally.

[Chris]

hmm maybe, i will go that route but right now im just looking for a remedy to get these sticks working normally.

Is it possible that the square actuator is installed upside-down?

[truz206]

i dont think so, the actuator starts out smaller and gets wider towards the top

[Chris]

i dont think so, the actuator starts out smaller and gets wider towards the top

The smaller side should face the e-clip, as in the picture below, so if you mean "top" and "bottom interms of an installed joystick that  sounds right...

[truz206]

yea that is how mine is set up, man this is really frustrating as i am just itching for some mvc.

[truz206]

Anyone have any idea what is going on here and why my diagonals dont work on this joystick. I emailed support about this and they wrote back syaing they were looking into the problem. Its killing me not being able to play andy fighters or anything besides four way games for that matter. If anyone could help me out here i would greatly appreciate it.

[Chris]

Well, here's another silly question: is the shaft hitting the hole in the control panel?  Maybe the hole in the panel isn't big enough, keeping you from throwing the joystick al the way to the diagonals.  

[truz206]

nah i dont think thats the problem. I talked to support @ dream arcades and they said they can give me a few things to try out and see if i can fix the problem myself or i can just send it back to them to fix.

I told them i will try whatever they say, and am waiting for their response. This stinks because i really dont want to ahve to send it all the way back to dream arcades in california (im in jersey). Oh well we'll see how it works out.