Failure to load BIOS - Black Screens w/o Errors

[thedigitalsaint]

Hi all,

Here's as much technical information as I can remember regarding the computer in question.

AMD Athlon Barton 2500 1.83ghz CPU
ATI 9700 Pro GPU
Sound Blaster Audigy ZS 2 Sound Card
1.5 gigs od DDR ram (off-brand)
Asus An78x Deluxe Mobo, Revision 2.0 (running latest BIOS)
XP Pro with Service Pack 2 installed
Hitachi Deskstar 82.3gb hardrives (x2 in a RAID 0 configuration) (Windows is mounted on thsi volume)(connected to the mobo through SATA)
Additional hardrives include a single Maxtor and Seagate drives for backup stroage. Both drives are 100gb in size, IDE and 7,200 RPM.
There are two generic DVD burners connected via IDE.
The PSU for the computer is an Antec Truepower 430w.

I was recently playing Americas Army, a FPS game when the computer restarting without any prompting. Upon going through the power cycle the hardrive light remains constantly lit about 30 seconds and then stays off. During this time there appears to be no video signal to the monitor as it is power save mode when it realizes that there is zero feed. There are no POST error beeps, the BIOS isn't visable and the computer seems less than ready to boot windows. I've double checked all of the power connections and PCI/AGP/IDE/SATA cables to make sure everything is snug.

My inital guess is that there is some type of hardware failure of the mobo or perhaps part of the PSU has bit the dust. The hardrives, optical drives and case fails are still operational. I forgot wether or not the mobo power cable is on the same rail from the power supply, perhaps that's the one that's gone bad? Perhaps it isn't related to the power? With no diagnostics or even so much as BSOD I'm at a lost for what to do next.

I've searched the rest of the forum for similar problems and the hunch seems to be power supply related? Would anyone care to confirm or deny this?

As for the more immeadate future, I have a backup computer that supports SATA/RAID. I'd really like to take my RAID 0 Hitachi drives and place them in the new machine so I can get back up and running as soon as possible while the old machine is being troubleshot. I've never tried taking a RAID setup from one computer to another, does anyone have experience doing that while maintaining the integrity of the data and not reformatting or damaging the disk contents? Any pointers would be most welcome.

Thank you in advance for any assistance you can provide. Ironically, I'm a moderator for troubleshooting game errors, but I normally deal with DirectX diagnostics and game drivers. This area is a little bit deeper than what I normally cover. Once again, thanks for volunteering if you have any feedback.

Kind Regards

[Murf]

Welcome to CTH

1. Open the case up and reset the BIOS (use the jumper if you know which one it is) or take out the CMOS Battery (round watch type battery) for about 3 Min's. Replace, reboot and immediately start hitting the DEL key and hopefully you will get into SETUP (BIOS)

2. Once into SETUP find where you can set to system defaults, usually a F key or a menu item.

IF the computer boots into windows, reboot again, this time the hardware wizard may come up and install some drivers (system defaults generally loads generic video drivers).

Let us know....