PC Not working anymore

Help appreciated

Published on October 7, 2005 By jelvis In PC Hardware

Been out travelling for two months and about a month ago my old trusted Linux box (old box from 98 which I use as a file server and general plaything) became unresponsive. Not much to do from abroad (the computer was in Sweden and I was in South America) and I guessed that it was some kind of software problem.

However, no I am home and that does not seem to be the case. When I turn on the power, there is power to the CPU fan, there seems to be power to the DVD-RW, the floppy and the hard drives, however nothing happens. No picture is output to the monitor, no beeps, the disks does not seem to be read in order to boot from them, no BIOS screen nada.

I have seen memory failures, CPU failures and disk failures before but usually you get some kind of an error message. I do not know much about hardware problems but to me it seems like the motherboard being broken or something. I can't boot from floppy or the DVD (I usually boot from DSL Linux from time to time but it does not work).

What do you think? Any ideas? Some pointers in the right direction before I get to work?

Comments

tjesterb

on Oct 07, 2005

If there's no beep from the motherboard, and you can't boot from external media, you can be pretty sure your mobo has died on you.

Have you tried unplugging the hard drive and booting from CD or DVD?

You could also try replacing the CMOS battery, but it's probably a long shot.

Corky_O

on Oct 07, 2005

I agree with tjesterb.

Try replacing the battery and check the PSU for the power light on, and check all your connections.

Also, try testing the monitor by turning it on with the computer off - most monitors will display a warning that no signal is received.

No BIOS or POST screen would point to MoBo.

kingbee

on Oct 07, 2005

does your power supply fan and/or cpu fan remain powered up or do they stop spinning about 10 seconds after you power up?

if so, pull your mb outta the case, put it on a piece of corrugated cardboard. connect the power supply, mouse, kb, hdd and insert your video card. connect the card to your monitor. power up and if you get a screen, power down and add another component. if you don't, test the monitor on another machine (unless it's one that gives you a 'no input' message and you know it's working). if the monitor is good, try swapping (one at a time) power supply, hdd and then the video card.

it's possible for all 5 of those things (mb, ps, hdd, vidcard & monitor) to die at the same time but i've never seen it happen.

Chris TH

on Oct 07, 2005

This comes under 'checking connections' I guess, but I had a very similar experience simply because the graphics card had worked it's way out of the slot ever-so-slightly . The metalwork securing bracket didn't line up exactly causing slight stress - enough to allow it to creep out (not totally!) over a period of about 8 months.

The symptoms, however were identical to yours. Reseating the card fixed the problem.

Posted via WinCustomize Browser/Stardock Central

kingbee

on Oct 07, 2005

the graphics card had worked it's way out of the slot ever-so-slightly

lemme guess...it was an agp card?

Chris TH

on Oct 07, 2005

Yep!

jelvis

on Oct 08, 2005

Thanks a lot for all the replies!

I will give it a shot within the coming days and report back.

jelvis

on Oct 13, 2005

Now I finally had some time to test the suggestions.

I opened it up and disconnected everything and started to add everything one item at a time, removing the battery and reinserting everything. Still didn't work.

The monitor showed the "no signal" message so it seems to work. The strange thing is that the network card shows a light on that must mean that it does get power through the mb but the mb still does not seem to work. When I connect the monitor to the graphics card the monitor goes into standby-mode so there is some kind of signal through there too.

Seems like the motherboard is broken then. Unfortunately it is an old Abit BH6 and they went out of commission in 98. I guess that my memory and my CPU still work. :/

I need some suggestion to a good budget-budget-buy and will post in a new thread.

Thank you for your help!

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