This damned machine whose POST errors (as in, I get no POST at all) defy logic…

I’ve been poking around about it, trying to avoid having to RMA the motherboard if I can help it. If you wish to follow along, it’s an XFX nForce 750a.

It’s… possible that there’s a jumper I overlooked. I won’t know until I get the machine “smuggled” back here (as in, transferred while mother is away at a bulldog meetup or something), but still… I’m going to look quite silly if I yank the jumper and I get a freaking POST, but at the same time it’s obviously a good thing since it means I can finally resurrect the machine and pocket the leftovers. :P

Because, you know, I would really hate to have a “1″ in the column of “machines incapable of resurrection” tally. I’ve had a good record thus far in terms of building boxes that don’t die (permanently) and I’d hate to ruin it.

Still, if I’m being foiled by a damned jumper… well, to say the least, XFX is getting beeped on the nose for not clearly marking in their manual “HAY YOU MUST TAKE OFF THIS JUMPER RIGHT HERE OR ELSE NO POST FOR YOU.” Seriously. I know the necessity of being observant, but that’s just absurd. That kind of jumper (which I’m presuming is either a BIOS/CMOS reset or something along those lines) is, like, the equivalent of the “REMOVE BEFORE USING” plastic wrapping that you see on things like printer cartriges, and should clearly be marked as such rather than leave saps like me to bang my head against the desk trying to figure out why I can’t squeeze a POST out of an otherwise-functional box. RAWR.

Anywho…

I really need a restock on my mini-fridge, except lawl transportation issues. Maybe I can try to divert to the market tomorrow after volunteer service. Aw, who am I kidding… can’t leave the Pups of the Apocalypse alone (not even with Evil Stepfather) for too long or BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN. Or so mother claims.

Being a third-rate resident in my own house sucks.

Bren’s box = ACT OF AETH.

Completely stumped.

I have basically rebuilt this machine and I cannot get a bloody POST. Everything is seated and plugged in properly. WHAT GIVES?

And, like, these are perfectly good parts… of course, TigerDirect is all “NO RMA FOR YOU” but I would have pocketed the leftovers anyhow. And cost be damned, this is, like, about pride of workmanship at this point.

So, yes. Act of Aeth.

Um… for the time being, I’ma see about getting an HDD enclosure so I can at least extract the files off the hard drive… and somehow smuggle the guts of Synergy and her failed-resurrection over to my house (probably get them transported while mother’s away at a bulldog meetup) so I can hack away at this without having to cook up excuses to get summoned over here.

Really bizarre stuff, this is. WTF.

Fellow system builders! I require your input.

Synergy (Bren’s machine) refuses to POST. Clearly she’s getting power, since lights and fans are turning on. Apparently over the past several months there were sessions where she wouldn’t POST, but hitting the reset button would make her cooperate… a rarity at first but over time became more frequent. I just heard about THAT today.

At my expense*, I replaced the motherboard (and with it, CPU and RAM), upgraded the power supply (original was a 430W, new one is 550W), switched the RAM slots, switched video cards (both the original and mine are 7600GTs), tried plugging the monitor into every freaking port, tried different monitors. Bad RAM has been ruled out (Bren’s father has a thing for collecting weird tools, lucky me he had one of those memory testers).

This was starting to get a bit silly so I booted up Dinah to google and such. Poked seraphzero and pigeonguided for second and third opinions. Attempting a different outlet to rule out bad wiring on that particular source = fail, no POST.

It’s, lke… GRR, there should be nothing preventing this freaking box from just POSTing. That’s all I want, just a POST, because if I can get that far, everything after is easy or at the least much more manageable.

Could it be as Pigeon suggested, that this could very well be a case of, well, something gone bad in the case wiring and I need to literally replace the box? (oh lawd, bad pun alert.) I mean, frontside case wiring doesn’t look too stable as is… it could be something got bent or whatnot enough, but… man, I’m going to feel a bit silly if this IS the case. (pun! again!)

Or, mayhaps… this is all really an Act of Aeth?

* Yeah, I shelled out for the parts. Service plan? I’m the freaking system builder, I AM the service plan. And, for the billionth time, I’d much rather spend my monies on making sure House Cantlay has usable computers and such, than to support mother’s absurd puppy habit, because at least House Cantlay’s residents aren’t going to be a bunch of drama queens if something goes bad, unlike mother who would (and HAS) declare me WORST PERSON IN THE WOOOOOOORLD over something like bad RAM. Seriousy. If I did nothing to help while their central desktop machine was down, I think my conscience would try to butcher me in my sleep or something. Besides, I get to pocket all the extra salvageable parts AND I get free food and the illusion that I have semi-normal parents for a few hours. So, it’s worth it. >_>;

A Yoshi is tired and maybe a little annoyed. Perhaps I shall bum around with Chrono Trigger DS until I fall asleep or something.

This is an Instant Ramen Alert!

Aeth, whatever happens, this is ALL YOUR FAULT. XD

Also I make no guarantees that I can avoid taking the butcher knife, accidentally or not, to Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews >_>;;;

Bah! Just when I’m about to post an updated screencap of that second Halloween picture, my server crashes. Can still access FTP and mail… just attempting anything on the browser end is broken (error code: Aeth– I mean 500). Hopefully when I wake up tomorrow, it’ll be fixed. >_>;;

One week until Election Day… or rather, “Yoshi hopefully kicks the crap out of the DMV and will eat some pie if she does.” (TWO pieces of pie if Obama wins! :P)

But, tomorrow? Chaos in the form of another new arrival of the canine variety, an English Bulldog pup by the name of Wilson (as in, the unseen neighbor). Yeah, I know… ANOTHER?! But, it’s not my call (only Kestine was), I just pay the vet and insurance fees. In hindsight, if I’d known picking up on those two were the primary enablers for mother to expand the pet population here as much as she did, I probably would have either refused or capped it at only covering the cats…

Time for sleep, before I go drifting over to Across Universe and stay up until dawn fiddling with stuff there…