I dont know if I have an issue with my video card or not. I can not get my keynote to respone by hit the CAPS lock key to get the green light to flash on the keyboard after the computer has been on for 30 minutes. Normal boot up time was 2 to 3 minutes. All I get is the fans spining nothing else.

Alright, we've established that the power supply is not dead. This does not eliminate it it as the cause, just pushes it down the list a little. Did you find your motherboard manual? Nevermind, I see that you have tried removing the cmos battery already. This only works if the mains power is also removed. No, a new cmos battery will not help, if it goes flat, you will get an error message telling you to set the date and time. If clearing the cmos does not help, the next thing to try is removing the ram cards and trying to boot without them. Fingers crossed, you should hear error beeps. Don't forget to disconnect the mains power before entering the case.

Well Yesterday I removed the CMOS battery for a couple hours. I put all back together and booted the system. I was able to see the system start to boot up. I got and error that said the date and time were wrong so I entered the system setting and corrected the date and time. I exit out of the system setting and then it goes back to a black screen with nothing. Would it be the harddrive that went out on the system?

This is a very good sign. The fact that it booted as far as asking you to reset the date and time indicates that everything has rudimentary functionality. That is, it is not completely dead. What I would like you to try now is check the cpu cooling. Is the heatsink clogged with dust? If so, remove the cooling fan and clean it out. Use compressed air or a bristle brush not a vacuum cleaner to avoid static damage. Leave the case open and power up. check to see if the cpu fan is spinning freely. If there is a problem with this, you will need to replace the fan. A tempory workaround is to remove the sticker and apply a drop of light machine oil into the bearing. This might last 3 to 12 months. Disconnect the power supply connectors from the motherboard and reconnect them a few times. This will clear any oxide build on them and may restore functionality to your computer. I perhaps should have mentioned earlier in this post that you should always disconnect the mains power before touching the inside of your computer. Also try to maintain frequent contact between you and the metal chasis. It is too early in the boot process to begin pointing the finger at the hard drive.

I had this same problem with my family's computer. If all of the above dosn't work, remove all expansion cards from your system except the graphics card. (internal modems, ethernet, etc.). Then try to boot up. Like I said, I had this same problem 2 weeks ago. We left one morning with the computer on. When we came back, the computer was off. I thought somebody in my family shut it down before we left, but they didn't. Pushed the power button repeatedly, nothing. Tried a different power cord: the hard drive light lit up instead of the power light! The fans were spinning, but still no BIOS post, or monitor signal. I tried it the next day with the old cable again: same thing, but the hard drive light was dimmer. So I took the internal modem out, and put it in another computer so we could still get online.. After I installed the modem, that computer did the same thing!!! I left the modem out on both computers, and both of them worked again. Thought I'd just explain a little.

Thanks Ray, it probably would not hurt to try removing unneeded peripherals. In you case it is likely the phone lines were struck by lightning causing the modem to develop a short. This prevented the computer from powering up correctly. The cmos was possibly scrambled by the surge, this is why a different power cable made a difference. When you disconnected the cable, you removed power from the motherboard allowing it to completely reset.

Yes that is very true, but the computer acted right again when I removed the modem. But I don't know why the phone line is still working, and why using a different modem makes it work again. But then again, there was a storm that day. But anyway, try removing the peripherals, and see if it makes it boot up again. I'd like to see if that is causing the problem in this case.

Thanks for all the help and I really appericate it. Well this morning and I still tring to figure out what is causing it not to boot. Over the weekend I had the CMOS battery removed since Friday afternoon. I pulled the RAM and reinstalled the CMOS battery and plugged the power cord back in and tried to boot. All I got was was 3 beeps and then nothing. Powered down and pulled the power cord and reinstalled the RAM. Put Power Cord back in and powered up and received the date and time not set. I set those and exited out and started to boot. This time it booted all the way into safe mode. In safe mode I ran the scan disk and will run the defrag. Is there anything else that I should attempted to do while in safe mode??

Well I dont know what to say. After I ran Scan disk (which did not find anything) and the Defrag I shutdown my PC and was able to get it back up with no issues. I have since shutdown again and plugged everything back in and right now I think things are all working fine. I have to check a couple more things but things are looking on the up and up. At this time still dont know what did resolve the issue but the only thing was to reseat the RAM. So I guess a thanks goes to to RIMFIRE. Thanks again everyone.

THe same thing is happeneing to me, but this was after i was overclocking my sempron 2400+ to run at 1.8 ghz instead of the 1.6 ghz, i shut down becuase i was getting errors, ready to bring it back to 1.6 ghz in bios, but it wouldn't boot, only spinning fans, and i ahve had this happened before, succesfully fixing it with the means mentioned earlyer. This time i did absolutely everything you guys ahve said and more to try to fix it, but nothing, i have taken the whole thing appart put it back to gether,(i origionaly built it rom scratch) i ahve never had a problem like this occure . Any other recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

well, im guessing theres a short curcuit on the mother board, i ahve tried a different processor (athlon xp 2000+) i ahve pulled the battery out for 20 min, reset the cmos like a 20 times, pulled out all pci cards, pulled ram out, and starting the comp hoping for beeps, NOTHING so i guess its time for a new mother board, man this sucks, lol but i guess ill go for the new anthlon 64, i was going to upgrade to that in a couple months anyways. but if anyone still has any suggestions, feel free to post thankyou!!

Hello All :) I am hoping someone can help here. Last night we had a lightning strike a couple of miles away. I heard a loud snap in the computer room. Later on I tried to boot the system and no go. The monitor goes green led then amber, the fans are spinning, the green led that goes on in the front of the tower goes on for a second when trying to boot up then goes out and the cd rom activity light blinks for a while. I have removed the cmos battery and disconnected the psu cable from the mother board, and removed the dial up modem. It didnt fry my cable modem because I'm using it now on an old pc, however this pc doesn't have an ethernet port for me to run my vonage phone from...... I dont know at this point if the lynkys router is fried although it powers up. Im wondering if I should temporarily install the hard drive from the fried computer into my old one as a slave to see if the data is still there.... Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.. Sincerely, RAZOR