I't been a rough day, while i was downloading a small file today, the computer just freezed. I noticed that my link to the router with my ethernet card was severed (no lights). I thought at first that my ethernet card was broken so i turn off power. Surprise, when i tried to reboot, the monitor took a much longer time than before showing signs of life. After the regular POST screens, it just hang there. Seems at first that my hard drive just went dead, but i tried to boot from a diskette and the cd-rom drive with the same effect. So i made several tests today to determine the cause of the problem, here's what i am absolutely sure that it is NOT causing the problem: - 2 Hard drives (RAID 0) (i checked them on another computer and they boot fine) - All peripherals including cd/dvd drives and every usb devices (i just disconnected them and the problem remains) - graphic card (same result with another card) - memory chips (toroughly tested) So, that leaves us with 2 possibilities, the motherboard itself (Abit IC7 with latest bios update) and the CPU (Pentium 4 - 3.0 GHz) This computer worked great for several weeks and i have never overclocked the cpu. By the way, during my dozens and dozens of reboots today, on ONLY one occasion, the POST stopped to show me the following phrase: "CPU not workable or has changed". But since it happened only once, that might not be related, maybe only a false message. So in order, when i power up, after a few unexpected seconds of delay the montitor powers on, then i see memory, hard drive, cd drives and then correctly detects my 2 raid drives. After that the cursor stays there on the screen, blinking forever. I hope i gave you enough info so that someone could help. Thanks a lot ! Zenno

try reseating ur cpu and heatsynk. if the cpu was not damaged it would not even show post. also, try entering the bios and setting it to defalt.

Do you have a spare working hard drive laying around? Try swapping drives and see if the pc boots. Your bios is not finding anything to boot to. No errors are reported after the system post. Just no system...right? You could use a win98 boot disk to view your drive partition but if not then use your xp disc and do a recover or repair procedure. Chances are that your drives partitions are unknown to the system. Frank

Try booting from a diskette. Or using the DEL key to get into CMOS Setup. There is nothing wrong with the CPU or memory, and most of the system board and the video adapter works. Try unplugging any other adapter cards, and cables. It could be something as simple as the diskette drive failing (its about that time in the boot process where it is first checked). But its an equal chance its one of the chips on the system board. When it goes to access the diskette drive, it is also the first time the DMA controller on the system board is used.

Thanks everybody but, i already tried booting from another source, hard drive, cd-rom, and diskette. It just stopped after the POST without even looking fro a source to boot from. Also, the first thing i tried was to boot with the bios setup default. But i will try right now to reseat the cpu. Stand bye. Zenno

One thing i forgot to mention, when the computer arrives to a dead stop, when i press the power button to turn it off, it just restart itself. So i have to hold the button for 5 sec to really turn it off for good. Zenno

OK !! I have remove the fan and cpu, took a good loo at it and then place it back. When i turn the power on, the computer gave me for the SECOND time: "The cpu is not workable or has been changed. Please recheck - CPU soft MENU" I tried rebooting several times with the same result. The cpu soft menu they are referring to must be the menu in the bios that i can manually change the frequency of the processor. Right now it's set to automatic so that gives me the real value of the P4, 3.0Ghz Any clue ???? Zenno