[geeks] Dual Xeon Motherboard - the End of my Tether??

[Mark Benson]

*SIGH*

I removed the board and from the system (was fully working apart from 
one suspicious moment when I banged the chassis and it froze, but worked 
gain after), and took the board off the mounting plate, added 2 brass 
stand-offs to support he weight of the CPU coolers, and reassembled it.

Now the board won't POST. It's failing on RAM initialisation. Sometimes 
it'll fail with the problem that the AMB chips aren't communicating. 
Sometimes no POST LEDs show up at all.

I've swapped RAM sticks about and nothing seems to make it happy.

I demounted it and checked it.

= There's no visible damage to the board underside or topside
= Two of the No. 1 CPU heatsink screws were loose (oops)

So now I'm stuck again. All I can think of is a CPU has partially 
croaked (maybe overheated?) and swapping them about might help.

Man this is a rollercoaster I wish I'd never got on...

-- 

Mark