Has anyone had a similar problem? I have this problem on two of my computers. This is the whole situation... On one of my computers it will sometimes power on but won't post and the HDD led stays lit, and sometimes it will start with no problems at all. My other computer started doing this about a week ago but will no longer start up or even post no matter how many times I try. I built these computers myself and haven't had any trouble with them until now. The first comp is only a year old, the other is 3-4 years old. I don't think the exact specs should matter but I can provide them if necessary. Thanks for the help.

Need more details about the computers.

Here are the specs:
The one that is dead now:

PIII 450 Mhz
128 MB PC100 Siemens
Abit VT6X4 Via Apollo Pro 133A chipset
TNT2 Ultra
Onboard Audio
3Com Network Adapter
IBM 22GXP 13 GB HDD
300W Sky Hawk PS

The one that works most of the time:
PIII 1Ghz
512 MB PC133 Infineon
Abit SA6R Intel 815E Chipset
Geforce2
Sound Blaster Live
Linksys Network adapter
IBM 75GXP 46 GB HDD
IBM 120GXP 80 GB HDD
400W Raidmax PS

I think that's all, besides Floppy and cd-rom. Tell me if I'm missing something.

Are they networked? Do you surf with either one? What kind of virus protection do you have?

"Are they networked? Do you surf with either one? What kind of virus protection do you have?"

I don't think those issues have much of anything to do with your computer's not booting up, save for maybe the virus issue. What you should do is unhook all the unnecessary components, as in just so that the PSU, MOBO, VGA, RAM and KB/Mouse are plugged in, then trying power up. If that works then slowly try adding each component one by one (staring with the HD) until the problem is back. You might also be looking at an overloaded PSU. Cheap PSU's do die and lose power in time. Once you have your "barebones" system, and if that still won't put, then it's time to swap in different ram, a different PSU, different VGA card... hopefully it won't be the motherboard or CPU at this point... Otherwise that just might be your prob. Kinda wierd that it happened to both your PC's tho. I'm guessing it's a PSU problem tho.

Yeah, I thought that it might be a PSU problem so I borrowed two PSUs that I know works but it doesn't help; one of them was a Enermax 450w. Yes they're networked and I do surf with both. I don't believe it's a virus though. I was going to do as you suggest, taking everything out and putting them back one by one but I didn't really want to do that in this weather... I'm too cheap to turn on the A/C... =)

Hey “john”

Virus infection WAS the point of my post.

Because these systems are so different from a hardware standpoint, it is unlikely that they are suffering from the same hardware problem. If they are both acting the same, I’d suspect a shared software problem and viral infection seems probable. If they were not networked and/or neither was connected to the Internet, the probability of viral infection would be unlikely.

It is also probable that these computers are suffering from different problems and just acting similarly. “Won’t POST” is a problem that has many etiologies.

Had the same problem recently on a single machine. Have you been switching HD's and stuff? Try some new IDE ribbon cables. That solved my problem. I had a total of 3 bad cables after switching to a new case, with a few swaps of HD's. Often got the message 'checking NVRAM' instead of proper POST. Regards.

Nope, I haven't even opened the cases recently. Could the cables just "go bad" all of a sudden?