Hey guys, haven't been around the community here in a while. I may have a serious issue though. Following what seems to have been a series of power surges, my computer shut itself off, and now I'm having issues with starting it back up again.
Last night there was a brief, yet powerful, thunderstorm. I think at one point lightning may have even hit the house, due to the power flickering, my tv going slightly staticy, the bright flash of light outside, and the giant boom shaking the house all at once. At some point after that, there was a power surge that managed to shut off a few items in my home, including my computer. Earlier there was just a brief moment when the lights dimmed and only the TV shut off. But this time, the main culprit was my computer.
I've essentially tried troubleshooting ever piece of hardwear......except for the processor. And that is what my biggest concern is. I now fear that my cpu may have died.
Everything else on the computer seems to start up just fine. The fan on the video card spins up, of course the one on the power supply does as well, and that seems to work since it still provides power to everything, all the case fans turn on, the cpu heatsink fan turns on, the light on the motherboard is on, and the hard drives seem to spin up as well.
I have tried removing every part so far, and troubleshooting everything I can. I've even tried it with just the hard drive, and even just the power supply plugged into the motherboard and nothing else. The strangest thing to me though, is that the motherboard makes no sort of beeps at all. I don't even mean the POST beep that it usually makes. I mean the serious of warning beeps it would usually give to inform me that something is wrong, just doesn't happen. No beeps to tell me the video card is missing, no beeps to tell me if the hard drive is missing. However the light on the motherboard remains on, and everything else seems to start up just fine.
So that remains one big piece of hardware I have not tried troubleshooting yet, my processor. I have a spare computer nearby which I believe may have the same CPU socket as the trouble computer (LGA 775, and I think it may have a pentium 4 in it). A few details about the problem computer; the motherboard is an Asus P5W DH Deluxe, and the processor is an intel er700.
So I may or may not have a spare processor to test it out with, and see if it'll start up. The reasons I haven't done it yet, is because I'm not fully sure if I actually have spare processor to troubleshoot with, and I also really hate having to take off the heatsink, mostly because I have no idea where my thermal paste is, and I'd want to re-apply it afterward.
So before I do any of that, I want the opinion of you guys here. What do you think the problem may be? Do you think my processor may have died?