No image on monitor, no boot & no error beeps

[whatnow]

hey, i'm trying to fix a pc that when i turn it on it sounds like it wants to boot but will not show anything up on the monitor. I've tried two different monitors with two different graphics cards and in different PCI slots and all the combinations I can with them. I've also taken out all the other PCI cards and drives to eliminate them too. I inspected stuff like the memory and processor for visual signs but can see nothing wrong with them. unfortunatly I dont have spare memory or a p3 to test them.

I also reset the cmos with the reset jumper, in case there was anything dodgy going on there. I checked the internal speaker, and it's all wierd correctly so I should really be getting error codes if something was wrong.

It worked fine for ages but one day the monitor just went off, apparently (it's not mine) the monitor got wriggled a bit (oh dear, wriggled?!) and it came back. then it got turned off and now wont come back on.

I dont really rate myself when it comes to problems like this. I have to really see an error or hear something before it's even close to getting fixed, this PC is a total mystery to me. The annoying part is that it all seems to sound fine, the discs will spin up and sound like they are doing something, but nothing will ever come on the screen.

If anyone's got any thing I can look into i'd be most grateful as it's doubtful i can fix this on my own. I can give the system spec if it helps?

Thanks for your time to read my problem

[sniper]

your gonna have to swap bits to find problem , psu , motherboard , cpu

[whatnow]

thats what I tried to do, but with no spare p3 processor (the massive ones), ram or psu what can ya do?

I'm sure the psu works out of all of it as stuff powers up, drives spin, but it could still not be working I spose. It feels like the processor, memory or MB could be gone, but are there any other tests that I could try before I go scouring the second hand market for testing bits.

It's also the fact that when it didnt work before the person who was using it claimed to have wobbled the graphics card/cable and it came back to life. This mademe think putting in a working graphics card with a working monitor in the pci slot furthest away from it should get a image again. Maybe he wobbled it too much and caused permanant damage, but it did fix it at the time and for a few weeks too.

Any other ideas would be appreciated becuase otherwise the HD is coming out and it's probably gonna be chucked, it seems stupiud to spend cash on a old machine when new and better bits can be got cheaper and will definatly work.

[Little John]

OK then listen up

Take everything of the board leaving just the cpu and fan, power supply and the pc speaker and turn it on you should get lots of beeps, graphics card error or memory error.

if you dont then it is either the PSU, board or CPU. if any of these are dead buy a new pc as the older bits can be hard to find especially a slot 1 cpu

If it works then add the graphics card (no monitor) and try it again, this time you will get memory error beep beep beep (evenly spaced beeps forever)

if you get that put the memory in and try it again you should now receive 1 beep telling you it is booting now turn it off.

plug the monitor in and try agian, I have seen monitors cause problems also.

if everything worsk so far just keep adding bits one at a time main system hardrive next untill it stops working and replace that bit. easy.

If it is a slot 1 CPU then it cant be much faster than a P3 550 they changed to S370 around that time

Good luck
LJ

[whatnow]

thanks buddy, will give it a go when i'm near it.

have some karma in the mean time

[whatnow]

:thumbs WoOp! WoOp! :thumbs

ok it now comes on, which is great as I assumed it was dead as a mofo. To fix it (for other peoples reference) I took out all the components as little john stated; the CPU, Memory, All drives (CD, HD), all cards (PCI). When I took out the CPU (slot 1 I belive (the massive ones)) a lot of dust had collected where the CPU fan cleverly blows out onto the moterboard heatsink. The gap between the heatsink on the Mobo and the CPU had created a little dust ally. Over time this seemed to have collected so much dust (althought it didnt even look that bad) it was shorting out other components on the Mobo. After getting a little toilet roll (how professional) I had managed to clear the path out.

I then put it in the absolute minimal state it needs to power the motherboard and internal speaker, I turned it on and to my enjoyment it bleeped like crazy. yay! I then put the CPU back in and the beeps changed to graphics and memory error beep codes. So I put the graphics and memory back and voilla, no beep's! . I felt pretty confident then to put all the other components back in, PCI cards & IDE drives. Turned it back on and it all worked, booted to windows 2000, ahh lovely.

now the only problem is that when I turned it off and back on again (just to check) I got different error beeps. The computer will boot normally but after a time of 3-20 seconds it starts to beep again. The computer still boots as it beeps (and it isnt healthy booting beeps) but this means there is still something wrong, and something i'm having trouble locating. I've taken out all the PCI cards, bar the grfx to elliminate them. When it starts beeping it was just go dee doo dee doo dee doo (sorry it's hard to translate beeps!) the beeps are constant and will generally keep going untill its turned off, or for about 30+ seconds.

The beeping generally starts halfway through windows loading but it seems to be more of a time thing, if I go into the BIOS it will also beep after a certain, unpredicatable amount of time.

I just turned it on then and it beeped from half way through booting windows (the windows 2000 splash screen with the blue progress bar at the bottom, before login) to just befoe that screen goes. I could then log in as normal, but when windows had loaded it began to beep again untill I shut it down.

I'm wondering if it's the CPU not being fully healthy but when computers get random it's definatly out of legue. computers work on logic, but this seems a little illogical to me, although i'm sure it's just that i've never had this problem before so find it hard to translate.

any help on this would be wicked as I know i'm close!

[Soulassassin]

On your initial error (power but nothing booting) I had the exact same probelm with a p3 system, it turned out to be one of the power rails not working (the 3.3v one i think) so the 12v components worked ie. cdrom ,hdrive etc..Bought a new psu and all was fine. As your having intermitting problems I think it may be your psu has a dodgy conection somewhere, possibly a plug with a bad crimp or a dry joint inside somewhere. As you dont have a spare psu it will be hard to eliminate it....

Just a though but it does seem similar to the prob i had..

[whatnow]

thanks for your reply soulassassin. I actually worked out what it was eventually. There was so much dust in there it was clogging the CPU fan up, which made it run badly & caused the processor to run @ 85oC Every time it got to the threshold it bleeped like a mofo as it wanted to be turned off. I got the CPU fan out and gave the whole thing a clean and now it runs at 25oC. Beautiful.

It really is a pain in the arse when a mobo manufacturer thinks they are 'cool' by not listing their old products. If they had I could have probably fixed all of this in just a few minutes becuase I would have known the codes for the beeping ...or would have had a better idea anyway.

anyway, cheers for helping me guys (& gals?!) I'm really happy I got this problem sorted as by this PC being fixed it means I can keep another PC that was gonna replace it...might turn it into a Linux box