I Bricked my Box

A week ago, I had this little black mini/micro/tinyATX box. It had a processor, a motherboard, a hard drive and some other shiny stuff in it. I went to reinstall Windows on this perfectly functional machine, and the strangest thing happened. Well, not the "strangest" thing... that's still to come.

I get the "Setup is inspecting your computer's hardware configuration" message. Then black. Miles of it. All black, as far as the eye can see. No blue screen asking me to hit F8 if I fully agree to sell my soul and those of my descendants to Microsoft in perpetuity.

I am puzzled. I slot back in the old hard drive, and it boots flawlessly. At least, it appears to boot flawlessly. After about half an hour of Company of Heroes, I get that blue screen I was looking for... well, not quite the one I was looking for. BSoD (ed: Blue Screen of Death for those of you not already intimately familliar with Microsoft's best marketing tool). Reboot. BSoD, mentioning something about the IDE controller.

So, I dive into the tangle of cables which is my pooter, swap my drives onto the same IDE ribbon (the one from the apparently fully functioning optical drive). BSoD. BSoD. BSoD.

Ok, awesome, time for a new Mother Board and Processor. While I'm at it, I grab a new power supply, and rummage around in the basement to find a tower case to replace the tiny/nano/picoATX case which has put so many scars on the back of my hands. In the process, I end up kicking (accidentally!) a mate's DVD drive and snapping it, so I give him my one and dig up an old 16x DVD-ROM drive. While I'm at it I figure I'll swap the power supply and the HDD too.

In summary, the following parts of the computer had been changed: MoBo, Processor, Power Supply, HDD, optical drive and case. The *only* two things I took over into the "new" box was the RAM and the Graphics Card (9600GT, my baby :) ).

I boot to the Windows install CD. Setup dutifully inspects my computer's hardware configuration. Then Black. Exact same symptoms.

Right then, must be the RAM. I pop in an Ubuntu install CD and run the Memtest app... and it all passes with flying colours.

Ok, time to hit the internards. In my forum frolicking, I uncover the fact that my MoBo actually requires a BIOS flash to support the socket AM3 processor I have in there. I flash it with rev 0602, and guess what. It all works... just kidding. Black.

My housemate suggests a hard reset of the BIOS memory, by popping the battery and jumpering the jumpy jumpers. I follow the instructions in the manual (I NEVER follow the instructions on the manual, but MoBos scare me a little, so I did).

Now, the moment of truth, I've flashed the BIOS, I've checked every single cable leading to or from the Mother Board. I've sacrificed a chicken (anyone know how to get chicken blood stains out of carpet?); I've done everything but offer up parts of my body in trade for a working computer.

I press the power button.

Black.

No memory test, no POST, no nothing.

Black.

Welcome to www.IBrickedMyBox.com, I'll be your webmaster for the evening.


(FYI M378N MoBo and Phenom II 810 processor. 9600GT Graphics card was removed early on because I couldn't find the "Defualt to internal VGA" setting under Advanced -> Chipset -> Southbridge -> Video -> Magic -> Work. 550 W generic power supply, old 16x IDE DVD Rom Drive. 200 GB IDE HDD. Testeted with 2 different Windows XP CDs and an Xubuntu CD).