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Hi,
I just moved back from college and when I plugged my computer in at home, it wont boot up. I usually get two beeps when I boot up, but after turning on the power, I dont hear any beeps and the monitor doesnt display anything. What could cause this? I cleaned out some dust in my computer right before I plugged it in. Maybe that had something to do with it? Does having a loose cable cause a pc to not boot up? I checked all the cables and they all look fine.
-confused
Hi,
Check your video card and memory to make sure they are seated properly.Sometimes when you move a computer things can get jarred loose.
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Make SURE you have power to the outlet.
Do NOT ASSUME anything.
Try a differnt computer power cord.
If all else fails, simplify the problem.
Pull EVERYTHING off and out of the motherboard EXCEPT
The motherboard, the power supply, the CPU, and at least one stick of RAM
The keyboard, video card, monitor.
PULL (unhook) all drives, floppy, IDE, etc, and pull ALL cards, modem, network, sound, whatever.
If the thing won't boot into an error screen or bios/setup, you have either a motherboard failure or a power supply problem.
Try a different power supply.
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Yes, but would a faulty CD ROM drive keep the computer from reaching post?
Because as I recall when the computer did work, about 5 seconds after it shows the system information, it would beep. It's not even getting to that point.
Even if there's a floppy disk in there, it wont read it...so it's not getting past a certain point in booting.
I only want to do what you suggest as a last resort. I'm afraid i won't know how to put it back together again =\
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What exactly does happen when you power up your comp? Are your fans running? Can you hear the hard drive spinning? Any lights?
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The monitor is blank. It's not receiving anything. The fans are running. I'm not sure if the HD is spinning, but I don't think so. The CD light goes on then off. It doesnt check if there's a floppy disk in the drive. The mobo's light becomes lit and stays that way indefintley.
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I would pull that vid card and reseat it.If that fails do as name states in response 3.
Also check for a bent pin on your monitor cable.
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Could be something failed, or that a "shakey" hardware setup may have caused the error because the bios battery died. That is one reason I recommend pulling out all hardware. The thing is, if a motherboard WILL NOT START with no hardware hooked to it, at least you know it's "right there" in what's left.
I would DEFINATELY pull the bios battery, and let the board set for about 1/2 hour to reset the bios, if not all ready.
See if you can scrounge up another video card, possibly you have an old PCI card?
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Update:
I think it's something with the motherboard. We pulled out all drives excluding the CD rom, and everything worked fine on a different computer. We used my vid card in another pc and it worked, but we put an older agp card in my computer and it still failed to display anything. It's not the hard drive either...we tested it on another PC and it was fine. we tested the power cables and they were all getting power. We made sure the CPU was still seated fine, reseated the ram, redid all the cables. One thing that may have been odd was that when testing the IDE ports on my mobo, not all the pins would give a reading on the ohm meter. I'm not sure if this is how it's supposed to be or not since we coudlnt find schematics on which pins were supposed to do what. (Asus P4P 800 VM by the way).
I'm thinking there's something wrong with the mobo, but I can only speculate at this point. I'll try pulling out the battery for now and see how it goes from there. I'm thinking of bringing it to the shop to have it looked at and possibly replaced since its' still under warranty.
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