(SOLVED) Motherboard broken?


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Hello,

 

I can't find my tower since a couple of days, so i decided to hook up a monitor to see what's going on. However the monitor doesn't respond. Also the usb key doesn't show the green light as usual. So i'm guessing that my motherboard is broken. I have an Asus P5B-VM. It it safe to just buy a new motherboard, or do i need to place the exact same motherboard? Or could it be something else?

 

I hope that someone can help me so i can bring my server back online.

 

Thanks in advance.

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Hello,

 

I can't find my tower since a couple of days, so i decided to hook up a monitor to see what's going on. However the monitor doesn't respond. Also the usb key doesn't show the green light as usual. So i'm guessing that my motherboard is broken. I have an Asus P5B-VM. It it safe to just buy a new motherboard, or do i need to place the exact same motherboard? Or could it be something else?

 

I hope that someone can help me so i can bring my server back online.

 

Thanks in advance.

or, the server was unplugged, or the power supply is bad, or the RAM is bad/not seated, or you cannot just hot-plug a monitor to that motherboard.

 

You can use just about any motherboard/set of disk controllers.  It does not have to be the same at all.

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Hello,

 

I can't find my tower since a couple of days, so i decided to hook up a monitor to see what's going on. However the monitor doesn't respond. Also the usb key doesn't show the green light as usual. So i'm guessing that my motherboard is broken. I have an Asus P5B-VM. It it safe to just buy a new motherboard, or do i need to place the exact same motherboard? Or could it be something else?

 

I hope that someone can help me so i can bring my server back online.

 

Thanks in advance.

or, the server was unplugged, or the power supply is bad, or the RAM is bad/not seated, or you cannot just hot-plug a monitor to that motherboard.

 

You can use just about any motherboard/set of disk controllers.  It does not have to be the same at all.

 

Or there was a momentary power failure and the motherboard does not restore automatically when power is restored...

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Thanks for your reply's.

 

I did not have a sudden shut down of my server it just stopped working. Now i have found an older board i've used before (ASUS M4A89GTD PRO) Which has 2 sticks of ram and an AMD X2 250 processor on it.

 

First thing i'll try is to use that ram on my current board to see if it helps. If that won't help than i will try an external video card to see if i can get to the bios. And Finally i will replace my current board for the one i've found.

 

Unfortunately i was not smart enough to write down which drive is on the ports. I can only guess that i've put them in sequal order. After reading the wiki's i know that it is very important to do this correct, So please Joe L. or anyone, could you tell me what i should to do get my server back online safe.

 

 

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You basically have TWO problems to resolve:

 

(1)  The system isn't powering up;

 

(2)  If you replace the motherboard, etc., you need to CAREFULLY reconstruct your UnRAID configuration.

 

Take them one-at-a-time.

 

First, you should check to be sure this isn't something fairly simple:  Do you have a UPS?  If so, is the UPS turned on?    Is the computer plugged in and turned on?

 

Does the computer have a video card installed?  The P5B-VM has onboard video, but also has a PCIe x16 slot for a video card.  If there's a card installed, there will be TWO VGA outputs on the back ... but only ONE will be active.    If a card is installed, be sure you've plugged the monitor into that output.

 

If you're convinced the PC has power, and you're still not getting any display -- not even the BIOS POST display -- then there are quite a few things that could be wrong => power supply; motherboard; etc.    Since you have a spare board/memory/CPU, you could simply connect your power supply to that board, and confirm that it boots okay ... first to just the BIOS;  then to your USB flash drive (no need to connect drives yet).  Or ... as already noted, you could replace your motherboard/CPU/memory with whatever set of components you want.

 

Bottom line:  Get a functioning PC FIRST ... without connecting ANY of your UnRAID drives to it.  THEN it will be time to reconstitute your array  :)

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Stupid of me about the ram. Offcourse that won't work.  Well it's all turned on, psu seems to work, the board also gives a green light. Just to be certain i'll try a different psu. I'm using the onboard video. I've found an external card that i will connect to see if it helps. I will run the tests and keep everyone updated.

 

 

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Stupid of me about the ram. Offcourse that won't work.  Well it's all turned on, psu seems to work, the board also gives a green light. Just to be certain i'll try a different psu. I'm using the onboard video. I've found an external card that i will connect to see if it helps. I will run the tests and keep everyone updated.

 

Just to be sure:  Is this a "known good" monitor that you're connecting?    Have you connected it to a different PC to confirm that it's working?

 

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Once you get a working system, be VERY careful about what you do when you reconnect your drives.    Do you happen to know FOR SURE which drive was your parity drive?  [and your cache drive if you had one]

 

Also, I presume that this is a v4.7 system -- is that correct?

 

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Once you get a working system, be VERY careful about what you do when you reconnect your drives.    Do you happen to know FOR SURE which drive was your parity drive?  [and your cache drive if you had one]

 

Also, I presume that this is a v4.7 system -- is that correct?

 

I think i have 4.7 at least not the latest one. I really don't know for sure which is my parity drive. I do not have have a cache drive.

 

Well the external graphic card didn't help, i even tried a different monitor. i couldn't test the other psu i have because it uses a different psu cable which i don't have right now. 

 

So now i'll try the new board with the new processor and ram without any drives connected with my old psu. Once i got a working system, isn't it possible to connect the usb drive en login to the tower (without connected drives) to see which is my parity drive?

 

EDIT: Got a working system with the new motherboard + CPU + RAM working with the OLD PSU. So for now i won't connect the drives, but is it safe to insert the usb key and acces the tower without any drives connected?

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EDIT: Got a working system with the new motherboard + CPU + RAM working with the OLD PSU. So for now i won't connect the drives, but is it safe to insert the usb key and acces the tower without any drives connected?

 

Yes, you can boot without any drives connected.  Leave the monitor connected (and a keyboard) so you can boot to the BIOS and be sure it's set to boot from the USB key.  Then boot to the USB flash drive; and you can then access Tower from another PC.  HOWEVER ... with all of the drives missing, I'm not sure if v4.7 will show you what they WERE or not => but give it a try.  If it shows you the drive serial numbers, make a note of them !!!    If not, you'll have to attack this a bit more slowly ... but it's still doable.

 

Try the above first, and see if UnRAID displays the "missing drive" serial numbers.

 

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I can't believe this...

 

After testing the new system i placed the screws back in it's place, no response. So tried to test it again like the first time (mobo & psu next to the case) still no luck. So now i have no idea why it did work so shortly. Maybe it's the psu afterall. I drove to the town to buy the psu cable, couldn't find any so i'm going to try and order this online so i can test it. I would say that it must be the psu since i've tried everything else now.

 

Could be a couple of days to have an update, just so you know.

 

Wow, can't even find a power cord for my psu (Be quiet dark power pro 850W) Anybody know what the name of this cable is?

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Well here's an update, i finally have a working system again. It boots just fine now with the new motherboard & psu, i only had to reset the cmos because the monitor wouldn't turn on.

 

Still i have a problem booting into unraid. I have no disks connected, i've inserted my usb flash drive and booted into unraid. It goes like usual:

 

loading bzimage..... bzroot................................etc. but then the monitor turns off. I'm not getting the screen where i can login. I do have the ethernet cable plugged in. Does anyone know what i should do here?

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Well here's an update, i finally have a working system again. It boots just fine now with the new motherboard & psu, i only had to reset the cmos because the monitor wouldn't turn on.

 

Still i have a problem booting into unraid. I have no disks connected, i've inserted my usb flash drive and booted into unraid. It goes like usual:

 

loading bzimage..... bzroot................................etc. but then the monitor turns off. I'm not getting the screen where i can login. I do have the ethernet cable plugged in. Does anyone know what i should do here?

 

Clearly your statement that "... It boots just fine now with the new motherboard & psu ..." is NOT correct.    You need to continue troubleshooting to isolate just what's wrong -- better PSU; different motherboard; etc.    Without a working system, you're not going to be able to make it run UnRAID !!

 

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Shutdown the server.  Pull Your USB flash drive.  Take it to a windows computer and run chkdsk on it.  (Right click on the drive in Windows Explorer, select 'Properties' -> 'Tools' tab and click on 'Error Checking' Button.)

 

If the Flash drive is OK, put it back in your server.  As it boots, select and run the memtst option for at least 12 hours.

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I believe it's something like: no signal going to sleep.  I think it's Unraid 4.7

 

I don't think you you understood what I was asking.  At the end of the ...........  that bzroot is putting on the screen, I saw what appeared to be a single word and then the screen goes blank.  That word is the one I was interested is know about.

 

The "no signal going to sleep" message is probably from your monitor going into its power saving mode. 

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What is the word that pops up at the end of the ....... during the reading of bzroot---- just before the screen goes blank?  I can't read it on your posted video.

Looks like "Ready" to me.  Assuming I'm understanding your question myself. 

 

Note that is what I get as well at least with 4.7 and 5.0betas not sure about 5.0rc's.

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What is the word that pops up at the end of the ....... during the reading of bzroot---- just before the screen goes blank?  I can't read it on your posted video.

Looks like "Ready" to me.  Assuming I'm understanding your question myself. 

 

Note that is what I get as well at least with 4.7 and 5.0betas not sure about 5.0rc's.

 

That is what I was having joeykey87 check for.  It makes a difference if it was not 'Ready'!

 

Are you using the ASUS M4A89GTD PRO motherboard?  This seems to be a recent motherboard.  Is this the first time it has been used or it is be recycled from another computer?  If this is the case, you might want to check the BIOS settings.  Particularly, in the video section. 

 

Do you have any other cards installed? 

 

Did you plug the USB flash drive into a USB3 port?  If so put it into a USB2 port.  (Not sure if this might be an issue but USB3 is a bit of a funny animal.)

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What is the word that pops up at the end of the ....... during the reading of bzroot---- just before the screen goes blank?  I can't read it on your posted video.

Looks like "Ready" to me.  Assuming I'm understanding your question myself. 

 

Note that is what I get as well at least with 4.7 and 5.0betas not sure about 5.0rc's.

 

That is what I was having joeykey87 check for.  It makes a difference if it was not 'Ready'!

Correct and when I watched the video it looked like it said Ready to me.

unRAID_Boot.jpg.bfa6a13dc725c0a7f323ebb3e2422585.jpg

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