in need of some serious trouble shooting help!

sophat

Okay, here's the story: I went home for a weekend and left my computer in my dorm room. I come back after a few days and turn my computer on. The power is on, but there's nothing sent to my monitor. And usually, when my computer turns on, there is a beep sound as it goes through the start up. But this time, there's no sounds or images on the monitor. I checked all the cables, and it's all fine since I left it just as it was before I left and it was working fine a minute before I left to go home for the weekend. I thought it might be my video card, so I tried borrowing my friend's video card just to see if that was the problem, but it still doesn't work. There's no picture on the monitor and the computer doesn't seem to load up at all, but all the power lights are on just fine. I'm really clueless as to what could happen while I was gone. No one touched my computer, so how could it just work one day and not on another day when nothing's been done to it? Completely puzzling!!! Maybe its the motherboard? But how could it just die out after a few days when I didn't even use it. Any one have any ideas?

Judas

erg... i hate it when this kind of problem happened..

Your going to do a full diagnosis...

Remove EVERY single peice of the computer... (disconnect hardrives and CD-Drives ...)

leave only the motherboard/cpu/ram in and hit the power.... if it peeps... (should probably beep steadily) that means it working and it's not detecting a video card...

Put a video card in and try again... if it doesn't work.... bad video card.... if it does.... move onto the next item.... and slowly work up until the machine either fails to put... (in which case you should have found your problem).... or untill you get it all back together.....

IF you computer doesn't beep when you've just got the motherboard/cpu/ram in.... pull the ram and boot.... it should beep.. if it doesn't.. it can be either 1 or 2 of the 2 things left... (other then a 3rd being your PSU)

pr0digal jenius

if your roommate has a PC you can 'borrow' for a day or so this becomes much easier.

Test your video card in his machine.

Hook your HDD(s) up as slaves on their machine and see if they are readable/writeable. You can test Optical drives in their machien the same way.


If all your components work..that leaves CPU or mainboard or RAM....and it's often hard to decide which it is. If you have another mainboard you can test your CPU and RAM in, do that, if not....you may have to get a bit creative and ask around

bake15

try clearing cmoss on the motherboard

PangingJr

i like to think/hope that this's about hardware that comes loose or a dirty connector, i'd start with RAM first, unplug the electrical cord from your PC/the wall, remove the case cover, clean inside the case, pull all the RAM modules out and reseat it back in, also change CMOS battery, it may not need to be changed yet but if you never change it you might want to do it at this time, be sure to keep yourself grounded while working on your PC, use the same battery types and handle the RAM by their edges. then power up the PC and see. if you still don't see the post screen, do a complete diagnosis as mentioned before.

sophat

Thanks for all the suggestions guy, I really appreciate it. Me and a few of my hallmates have basically unplugged everything (hard drives, cards, memories) and it still didn't beep. We then went ahead to remove the CPU and it still didn't beep. So I'm guessing there's something with the CPU. But what I don't understand is, how does it work when I left, and come back to find it no longer working? Nothing was done to it cause I locked my room up and I have don't have a roommate. My power supply was completely new, bought it just the week before this all happened because my old one was really old. Bahhumbug!

MiDKnYtE

check the capacitors on the motherboard. if they are leaking or bulging, then it's definitely the board.

pr0digal jenius

I don't know HOW it happened...maybe a powersurge or high humidity while you were gone?