Unique problem

[archcommus]

Hey, this is about the same friend that had the OTHER uniqe problem in the Operating Systems board. His system now seems rather screwed (not at all, at least we don't think, to his HDD space issue). He was in the process of downloading an 800MB file. In the middle of the night, he got up to check its progress. The computer had frozen. That happens sometimes, however, so he restarted. It froze on startup. He did it again and again, and it got worse and worse. Eventually it got to the point where it coudn't even get past the initial Compaq screen. Now, the power LED lights, but nothing comes on the screen. He has checked all cables and connections, and has tried removing the battery on the motherboard and let it sit for awhile to clear the CMOS. I, however, am not even sure if you're able to clear the CMOS that way. Anyway, that didn't work, and he's now completely stuck. Any suggestions?

 

[Big B]

Yeah, you can clear CMOS by taking the battery out for awhile.

Do you know the specifications of the system?
Have you smelled anything burning?
Are all the fans running?

 

[archcommus]

Hmm, let's see, it's a Compaq, but I'm not sure of the model number. It's an Athlon 1.33GHz CPU, 256MB of memory, a GeForce 2 MX 64MB video card, but I have no idea of what motherboard, etc., so I'm sure that doesn't help much. And he didn't say anything was burning, and I'm pretty sure he has confirmed that the heatsink is properly installed and that the CPU and case fan are operating normally. The only thing I can think of is that his motherboard just died.