[Nottingham] Motherboard problem

[Michael Leuty]

Dear List,

This is not really a Linux problem, but I'd be grateful for your advice.

When I got home last night my PC wouldn't start. Nothing happened when 
turned on. I assumed that the power supply had failed, and this 
afternoon I bought and installed a new one. But it still won't work.

There is an LED on the motherboard which lights when there is power to 
the board. This LED is lit. However, the power light on the front of the 
PC is not lit, and pushing the on button makes no difference. I have 
also tried replacing the CMOS battery.

When I say nothing happens, I mean that the power supply doesn't even 
start working (the fans don't start). No POST, no nothing.

The last time the PC worked the clock had got out of sync, and ntpd 
didn't seem to be working. I used a manual command to correct the system 
time, but at shutdown there was a long delay and the screen reported 
problems in changing the hardware time (I can't remember the exact error 
message). I got fed up waiting (it was late at night) and just turned 
the PC off.

It sounds to me as though the motherboard is faulty (an ASUS P4B), but I 
can't think why turning the PC off while it was trying to adjust the 
hardware time should cause a problem.

Has anyone any bright ideas?

-- 
Mike Leuty
using his daughter's laptop with WindowsXP <hawk, spit>