Cannot pass POST

[Broken Quiche]

I have had two ASUS P5KC motherboards, both of which were first unstable with GNU/Linux and then broke.

In the breaking of the first, it stopped POSTing. I could read the 'American Megatrends' screen if I pressed the right button very quickly after switchin on, but even then it would not do anything more.

In the breaking of the second, it refused to boot from LiveCD. I didn't try USB and couldn't try hard drive, since Linux was not stable enough to install!

It seems that I have had segfalts (not literally, Wikipedia has shown me, but probably some sort of memory paging problem, whatever that is) - Zenwalk crashed on installation, declaring a segfault, and YaST exited on signal 11 (the signal that indicated a segfault) during the OpenSUSE 10.3 install.

So, after the replacement, I decided to get a third motherboard from scan.co.uk as opposed to eBuyer: a GA-EP35-DS3.

I installed this and it would not get past the very first, pretty, white and green screen even to start with (sounds like a video POST screen). I tried with a ps/2 keyboard (but not mouse). No beep codes (but maybe the mobo speaker isn't plugged in, if that makes any sense - maybe it doesn't).

Any ideas?

[drew and not u]

Could be a multitude of problems. Likely suspects would be RAM, video-card, and/or PSU. I would bet on the RAM (check voltages and timing. Can you boot a Memtest86+ CD? I would have tried swapping those out before going through three motherboards, as there is likely nothing wrong with any of them. Do you have spare's to test with to narrow down the problem?

[screwballl]

it always helps to swap out parts if you have extras... since the main board itself has been changed a few times now, I would look into the memory for starters... if that checks out then maybe your power supply is on the verge of dying...

[Broken Quiche]

Thanks for the ideas. I can't even reach the bootloader screen of any CD so far, so I doubt that I could boot from a special memtest86 one. I would use the Ubuntu LiveCD for memtest86.

I unplugged some SATA cables in case the power was inadequate due to faulty PSU.

Ooops, I havn't given my specs yet! Let's add them to my sig...

And I'm afraid I don't think I have any spare parts that I can try, unless some 233mhz processor and 64mb ram counts. Maybe I could see if I could borrow some.

I suppose that it might be sane to put the RAM in different slots. I admit, I did pull on it when lifting the motherboard once...

I was careful when doing processor installaion and I don't want to take the heatsink off, since it's got thermal interface material on it. That said, I admit to finding some TIM on the bottom of one of the CPU fan pins.

[drew and not u]

Definitely give a shot to moving the ram around, trying one stick at a time, etc. If it will work with one stick but not the other, you'll know one of them is bad.

[Broken Quiche]

I have removed a stick of RAM and it is working beautifully. I shall attempt to arrange for a return or refund. Thanks guys!