This question isn't strictly Linux-related, but I'm putting it up here since I've had much better experiences with the LinuxQuestions community than on most other forums.

I have a Cooler Master computer with a BIOSTAR TA790GXE 128M motherboard. A month ago or so, my brother installed Windows on his computer alongside an existing Linux system. Soon after, his computer failed. I don't remember the exact circumstances, but it wouldn't boot up at all, not even to the POST screen. It would turn on, but it wouldn't boot up. We tried the hard drive in the Cooler Master computer with the BIOSTAR board, and it wasn't long before this computer was bricked as well. My brother's computer was fairly old, and we already replaced it. But I wanted to see if the Cooler Master computer, which is newer, could be salvaged.

The Details

Again, this is a Cooler Master computer with a BIOSTAR TA790GXE 128M motherboard. Turning the power on results in a blank screen, a single beep from the motherboard speaker, and four red flashing lights on the motherboard itself. (Before the failure, there was a single green light.) The board and the fans all have power, but nothing appears on the screen.

What I've Tried

To be honest, I'm not that great with motherboards. I know computer peripherals quite well, and I'm good with software, but this kind of thing is a little out of my line. Still, a little internet searching gave me a few potential solutions.

- First, I tried reseating the memory. No change.
- Next, I reset the CMOS. Again, no change.
- Then I ordered a new BIOS chip and installed it according to the instructions in this video. This time there was a little change. The four blinking red lights were replaced by two steady ones. However, there is still nothing on the screen.

Is there anything else I can try? Or is this board bricked for good? Please let me know if you need me to give any more information. Thanks in advance.

P.S.: My Opinion

The problem that these two computers have is basically identical. I'm thinking the Windows hard drive had something to do with it. After all, they both manifested the issue within a week or two of having that drive in them. Perhaps a hardware virus? I don't know for sure, but I thought I'd mention it.

I have no familiarity with that motherboard, but I have experienced a similar set of symptoms more than once over the years, including recently.

Without doing a one-to-one comparison of events leading to the conditions I experienced I will just offer that I have seen both failed memory sticks and failed drives cause a complete inability to boot or to reach the BIOS setup, along with unfamiliar LED status on the motherboard.

So I would suggest substitution of each separately to see if you can find a way forward.

If you don't have any spare memory, then if you have enough sticks in the system to remove one or two at a time, and swap the slots each stick is installed into.

And try any other drive in the system - even if it isn't bootable it may allow you to reach the BIOS setup screen which would be progress.

You might also want to replace the original BIOS chip(s) on the off chance there is a problem with the new one which might mask your original problem.

By way of encouragement, about 4 months ago I upgraded my wife's older computer, running Slackware 14.2, with new/more memory and replaced the hard disk with an SSD and installed Slackware 15... about a week later it became a brick. I restored the original memory and was able to boot over the network from which I ran memtest - unsuccessfully... bummer... I had another older system with similar memory so tried again - successfully. I then found the SSD had been corrupted so with the new RAM I ran available drive checks, all seemed OK so I reinstalled.

Bad new RAM, bad original RAM and drive problems. But it has been in continuous use since. It would be difficult/pointless to try to find the original "why" behind that, but sometimes failures can cascade and the way out is to fix them all at the same time and move on.

Good luck!

Thanks for getting back to me. I swapped out the RAM and, after resetting the CMOS again, the computer booted up just fine. Thanks so much for the help!

You are welcome, glad it helped!