I’m a beginner.
Got this throw-away computer. I want to learn to fix it cheap as possible.
I turned the power on. The screen is blank (black).
What’s my next step?
Motherboard: MS-6714 VER:1
it’s a tower.
Opened the case.
It has no hard drive.
It has a MS-6714 VER:1 motherboard with 1GB UNB PC3200 CL3 RAM, integrated sound card, stiffy drive, CD WR drive, power supply and two fans.
I pushed the power button and the LED’s and fans work.
What is a compatible hard drive to get?
Required components(cpu and heatsink, ram) .When u turn on the system do u hear fans spinning or beeps? Also remove all un-necessary component and leave only cpu+heatsink, a stick of ram, keyboard, v-card(if u don’t have onboard video), psu and try to start the system.
If you have both a video port for onboard video, and a video port on a card in a slot space, you must plug the monitor into the video port on the card in a slot space – most mboards will produce no video from the onboard video port when a video card is installed in an AGP (or PCI-E X16) card slot.
……
It is easy to test for incompatible ram that has caused your mboard to fail to boot.
Make sure you have a speaker or speakers or the equivalent connected to the mboard so you can hear mboard beeps (see your mboard manual if you need to).
Remove the AC power to the case/power supply.
Remove all the ram.
Restore AC power.
Try to boot.
If nothing else is wrong, you will get no video but you will hear a pattern of beeps that indicate no ram is installed, or a ram problem.
E.g. for an Award bios or a bios based on one, that’s often a beep of about a half second, silence for a half second, a beep of about a half second, silence for a half second, continuously.
…..
Old MSI mboards like your model are more likely to have this problem….
Some mboards develop this problem – electrolytic capacitors were installed on them that were not properly made, and they fail eventually – the mboard manufacturer didn’t know they were improperly made at the time the mboard was made.
Open up your case and examine the mboard to see if you have bad capacitors, and/or other findable signs of mboard damage .
This was the original bad capacitor problem – has some example pictures.
History of why the exploding capacitors and which mboard makers were affected:
http://members.datafast.net.au/~dft…
What to look for, mboard symptoms, example pictures:
http://www.badcaps.net/pages.php?vid=5
Home page that site
– what the problem is caused by
– he says there are STILL bad capacitors on more recent mboards.
http://www.badcaps.net/
Pictures of blown capacitors, other components, power supplies, Athlon cpu’s, etc.:
http://www.halfdone.com/Personal/Jo…
Go here and get the right manual for your mboard, then look in the manual for the Cmos jumper info:
http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=s…
Click on the underlined model names to see the full support page for them. Look at the specs and the picture of the mboard. When you find what seems to be the right one, click on the link for the manual.
If the manual loads on the screen, when it has ffinsihed loading, click on the floppy icon at left in the top bar and choose a location to save it to.