PC Problems - Hurting Hardware

Hello Kuncoro,

I don't think the wrong type of memory caused the problem. Perhaps it was how it was inserted or perhaps it was static electricity. I lost 17 out of 30 Asus mother boards due to static electricity. The damage showed up in one of the smaller multi-pin processors (about 30mm square) most of the time. The actual spot was very small but plainly visible. It looked like a small blemish on one of the smooth flat integrated circuit chips. Many of my blown motherboards would stop boot up process in the BIOS setup. The smell of burnt electronics was usually the first indicator.

When we replace the mother boards we found that the main processor was still OK. Also, the RAM was still OK and could be reused. The boot up on a new mother board provided the tests to confirm the good condition of the re-usable plug in devices. The hard drive was not affected. This was the same for all of our 17 motherboard failures. Some of the power supplies, however, suffered damage and soon had to be replaced.

What we understood to be the cause was a condition where stray voltages triggered all of the transistors in this one IC chip to turn on at the same time. When it did, there was a direct short circuit inside the chip and it became the circuit breaker. It actually got so hot as to melt the ceramic covering in a spot about 1 to 2 millimeters. We found the cause to be due to low humidity in the room where this occurred. We added a water vapouriser (humidifier) to the room and never suffered another failure. The stray voltage was usually introduced when someone started to plug in a headset to the audio channel. But sometimes it occurred at other times. All I can say for sure is that adding humidity got rid of the static electricity problems.

Prevention is the key.

Not much you can do about plugging things in wrong but Electrostatic discharge is a very common problem and is easily preventable.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.tpub.com/content/neets/14186/img/14186_135_1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.tpub.com/content/neets/14186/css/14186_135.htm&usg=__gudNDsYTX2hzcHWikBIQmo2i4LE=&h=371&w=552&sz=20&hl=en&start=3&um=1&tbnid=NXnsf3et8rJdGM:&tbnh=89&tbnw=133&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dpersonal%2BESD%2Bprevention%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26um%3D1

DDR2s are usually slotted differently from DDRs, so there may have been a little mechanical damage from forcing the DDR2 chip set into the DDR slot. I have no idea if this would cause internal toasting of your system chips, but the burnt smell is a good indicator that something went drastically wrong in the semiconductor bits.

Kudukdweller9 sounds like someone with better experience than I have in these matters, and I would defer to him regarding internal chip matters. Really can't see how any hardware beyond a chip might be affected, so it's doubtful that the hard-drive is the problem. Whether this sort of memory chip mismatch would affect resident software systems is a question for those wiser than me to comment upon.

Top o' the day !

Time saving only, chuck the motherboard.......find a new one that is CPU compatible, it should be cheap as it must be at least 5 years old, you might even get given one......

The RAMs should also be got rid of as they might damage any new hardware.......it pays to be strongwilled and get rid of everything that was close to the failure as it could burn new(er) good hardware.

Keep the idiot that plugged the wrong RAMs well away, or buy him some new glasses!!!

I have seen the same problems (from blind persons) with plugging in RAMs the wrong way round, they did not fit, but power was applied anyway......smoke was the result!!! Nothing to see easily either....

Bad luck Guys.......

Hi Kuncoro. Firstly don't just throw anything away.

If your pc boots (into Bios or Cmos) that means that the function of the CPU is still working. It will not boot at all if it does not see any RAM or if the CPU is dead. So this means it does see some RAM. Within the CMos or Bios you should be able to see and fault find various things.

It will show if the hard drive is present or not. It will show your RAM.

Here is what you try first. Boot into CMos and see if it detects your hard drive. If the hard drive is there then switch off and take all the memory modules out of the pc. Use one memory module and try and see if it boots normal. If it does'nt switch off and try another memory socket. Do this with all the sockets untill it boots. If it does'nt boot try another memory module and do the process all over again.

If the hard drive is not present in the CMos then switch off and double check your ribbon cable and make sure that pin1 is in the correct position. (pin 1 on the ribbon is marked with a red line or some writing on the one side of the ribbon cable) It will also be marked on the motherboard Primary IDE socket. On the hard drive side it should be grooved and can usually be plugged in only one way, otherwise just check and find the mark for pin1 on the hard drive. If you still don't see the hard drive in the Bios switch off and use the Secondary IDE socket. Check now if it is seen in the Bios.

If it boots to Bios then usually it will give you an error before and ask you to press del. or F2 to enter Bios. What is the error? or does it just go straight into Bios?

Try and let us know

It is almost impossible to insert DDR2 in DDR slot due to the socket being different. The chip or the socket would have broke before you were able seat the ram completely.

What I do to avoid static electricity is always be touching the metal case while inserting hardware this will send static to case before you touch board, case is ground for everything in the circuit.

Get a stick of ram that you know isnt toasted yet and put it in following grounding instructions above.

To try to reset the bios. Unplug power cord & pull the battery out of the CMOS and press the power button. Let it sit for 15 min for capacitors to discharge completely. Put the battery back in. Plug back in & press the power button and hold it so that it turns on and then after 5 secs it turns off. This will discharge and static charge built up in the circuit caused from the hard drive spinning over time. Turn it on and see if you can boot your drive. If you go straight into Bios again you probably toasted your processor.

Steve

Dear Steve,

you wrote:-

If you go straight into Bios again you probably toasted your processor.

This is simply not true, if the Processor is not working, nothing will happen. Silence. Just booting into the BIOS has probably tested 99% of the Processors actions and operability, if not more.....

I believe that the chip(s) involved with driving the RAM memory may be damaged (different chipsets do it in different ways)...or the lands on and in the mainboard for the RAM.....but I am also prepared to be wrong as remote diagnostics are quite difficult over CR4......

Well Ive been mistaken before.

Regardless he may have corrupted the settings in the bios and resetting that is the most basic hardware problem fix I can think of.

Tip: Dont let people screw with your computer if they have no clue what they are doing.

Steve

I agree, I only found fault with that one comment.......be cool!!!

As I understand it , after restoring the original ram, you could get into the BIOS? If you can get into the BIOS, the processor and ram are still good. If either were bad, you could not post and get into the BIOS, you would only get a blank screen and possibly a few beeps out of the board.

If you can post to the BIOS, your power supply is probably also good, at least the motherboard power section. If you can get into the BIOS, check to see if you can see the drives in the drive list. If not, listen to the drives or feel for vibration to see if they spin up. Recheck all of the BIOS settings. Sometimes a hardware error will default the BIOS. You can usually tell if it has been reset because the date will reset to the mfg. default date.

By the way (BTW) DDR2 ram won't fit into a DDR slot, at least not withoutsome damage to the slot or the ram. The ram key is about 1.5mm off. I have seen people who installed ram partially and thought it was seated. If that happens, usually you will smoke the ram because the gold contacts do not go straight in but are cocked and can short across 2 contacts.

The odds are slim that you nuked the drive, especially if it spins up. If it won't go into Windows, it is possible that the boot order was changed. Check the BIOS. If you are worried about lost data, put the drive in another computer and see if it will read or at least post to the BIOS. If you can't get into the bios and the unit hangs during post, try swapping the ram around. Some boards are picky about ram and the slot it's in.

Good luck!

LuckyDog (computer Tech for 25yrs)

I liked your post, it seems to show good sense and knowledge.

Why thank you Andy, you are most kind.