Dead in the Water

[Coyote]

Not my bike, my computer.. I have a TV card in this computer and was watching Monday night football. Suddenly there was a loud squeal and the video went blank. I used to build computers so I have loads of parts. I put in a different video card - still no video.. It took me 3 days to narrow it down to the motherboard. Luckily I had another identical motherboard from years ago (this computer has been running for 9 years). Ripping it apart and starting from scratch and building it back, she works once again. -- Sorta.
I do a complete backup every other Sunday morning. I had just done one and am currently running off that drive. The drive that was working will no longer boot. That's why I have been absent.

[ConnerVT]

Swap in another power supply. especially given it made noise before it died. P/S fails are way too common.

[Coyote]

I agree that cheap power supplies live a short life. Usually fry with a SNAP!. I have a high end power supply made by Thermaltake. While I was down I took it apart, cleaned it and lubed the fans (2). The sound the computer made was a high pitch squeal. I did find a dark spot on the back of the motherboard where a component fried. Power supply seems fine and all the voltages check out. Computer is 99% back to normal.

[rbond]

The squeal was most likely a capacitor going out. That is a common effect of one dying quickly. You were lucky you had an identical board, if it was a totally different board, best practice would be to reformat and re-install Windows, drivers, apps, etc. It probably is time for that anyway to' perk' it up. I am a hardware tech for the city where I live, been working on these things since the 80's.

[Coyote]

Yup. The dark spot is under a capacitor.. I'm running an ancient Celeron 2.4, o'clocked to 3.0. Thing has been a real trooper. Never drags it's feet. I do a full backup of 'C' partition every other week using Norton Ghost 2003! on a floppy!. So if I get a virus, I just overwrite 'C' with my backup. 2HDD's (early SATA3.0) and a removable IDE drive for my backup. All this using XP-Pro on a home built machine.
MB is ancient too. How long has it been since ABIT made motherboards? Too bad they dropped out. Really quality boards. Intel boards are OK, but their BIOS is very limited.