Hi Optoma
Nice idea - but made no difference I'm afraid.
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PC won't boot and monitor has no input
Hi experts
My PC wouldn't boot today although it was working fine yesterday. The hard drive light comes on and stays on and the fan happily spins round, but the monitor is not receiving a signal. I have tried the monitor on another computer and it's working. Also, there is no beeping from the PC, which normally indicates a successful system check or errors.
I tried to boot the PC with the Windows XP disk in the CD drive but that made no difference. I have checked all cables, cards and connections and all seems fine. I built the PC myself about 2 years ago having designed the specification myself and it has been a great PC. So, I know a bit about building PCs but I have never seen this before. If there was a screen error I would know what to do. But this? I'm stumped.
I have a horrible feeling something has failed, like the processor or something equally expensive! Hopefully not though!
Looking forward to your suggestions!
Thanks
Dave
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Answers
Here my troubleshooting procedure :
clean the system from dust, then test with the minimum setup - disconnect also all peripherals and network cables :
connect only motherboard + cpu + 1 ram stick, video card, power supply
verify that the 4-pin or 8-pin CPU Aux power plug is connected
verify that the VIDEO card has a power connecter - if yes, connect the power to it !
on boot, do you have a display?
if NO it is one of the connected, swap ram, Power supply, video card or monitor - leaving only motherboard and cpu
if Yes, add devices till the problem shows
you can also check the motherboard for bad capacitors as shown here : www.badcaps.net
additional tests and things to try :
boot without ram, it should beep; (also, without video card)
try bios default settings,(if possible) or clear the bios by removing AC and bios battery
renew the CPU heatpaste
Does your system have an onboard video adapter?
The few times I've dealt with symptoms exactly like what you have were on systems with onboard video, and it seems like it was a hardware issue with the motherboard and/or the onboard video adapter.
I replaced the motherboards on those systems, and they worked perfectly fine after that.
The system has a video card as there is no onboard graphics. This card appears to be clean and seated correctly. I have tried removing all memory and the video card, but the system still does not beep in error. It does, however, appear to be trying to boot from the CD drive - or at least, its light is coming on. Maybe it just does that as a self test, I don't know. The capacitors also look perfectly healthy. I do not have a spare PSU to test with, nor a spare graphics card.
The keyboard lights do NOT light up.
The screen does nothing, just stays in standby, so I see no BIOS settings.
I'm pretty sure it's not even getting to that as it doesn't appear to be performing a POST.
Nobus - I've tried as everything you suggested except swapping out items that I don't have spares of, namely PSU and graphics card.
POST is checking only power, if good power, then it checks video and memory(this includes that the slots on the motherboard could be bad)When these components are ok, it will give you something on the screen and you should be able to enter BIOS with F2(might be some other key for your computer). If you cant enter BIOS, then we are talking about the above components or the slots where they are installed gone faulty.
If it is a power issue, then it will shut down, not hanging. He has changed the memory, so that leaves motherboard or video issue.
POST checks only power ?? i think not; read more here = http://www.dewassoc.com/kb
if you took out the cards and it did it then ram and it still did it with no beeps its probably a bad mother board although once i had a mouse that had a short that did it so you might want to then put one ram chip in and video then only plug video and power in then turn it on if all that gives same result goto dell.com and buy a new pc lol
Nobus, I see that you are trying to teach me what POST is using an article that I posted myself in another question that you also participated in. I am sorry for my language, as English is not my native language.
To prove it, this is the question where I posted the exact same article. And please stop picking on me, as we are all trying to help, not prove who is the best. If you have any comments on my advises, please stop using articles, that someone else has posted, but say it yourself.
http://www.experts-exchang
where do you guys get the idea i try to teach or compete?
i respect everybody, and just posted an article explaining the post - and i certainly have no intention of offending anyone
i don't even know if it has been used before (and that does not matter imo, everybody can use the articles on the net)
let's get back to the asker's problem; some feedback would get us further here
All have had good suggestions....but here is what I'd try...
Unplug all peripheral cards (video, nic, modem, etc.). Remove all memory. Unplug HD, optical, and floppy drives. The only thing connected should be the 20/24 pin power plug and the 4 wire (yellow/black) power on plug. Power the machine.....if no beep during post, then you have isolated issue to one of three: motherboard, processor, or power supply. I'd try swapping power supply with a known good one, if you don't have one, ask a techie type friend or your IT dept at work if they can loan one to you for a day...if all else fails, you can pick one up for under $20 from www.3btech.net.
davidcowler,
I was going to put in my 2c, however it would appear that every possible answer to every possible hardware problem has been given. Unfortunately, without any spare parts lying around, at best your playing a guessing game. In my experience if you do not get a POST beep then it can be any number of things (i.e. Mobo, CPU, PSU). Isolating the problem component/s is the tricky part. I wish you good luck with it, with as many EE's as you have helping i have no doubt that you will find an answer!
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by: optomaPosted on 2009-11-01 at 04:31:06ID: 25713501
You could try resetting the bios by unplugging the machine and removing the cmos battery. Leave them out for a few minutes.
Whilst there reseat the memory modules(ram)