Diagnosing DOA computer

Hi folks:

The cousion brought in her system. I've been servicing this for about a month, and now it's completely DOA.

Before it was running ME, with so much spyware, piggyback, and viruses it was virually unusable. I wiped it cleaned, put on XP Pro, and it worked fine for about a month.

Then something kept it from giving a POST beep. I pulled the CDRW drive, and it worked for a week.

Now it's laying on the floor, with everything pulled, and still no POST beep.

Have I overlooked anything? It's been several years since I had a DOA computer, so I may be overlooking something. The only thing I havne't pulled is the CPU, POST speaker, and CMOS battery. The motherboard is getting power (The green light is on) and the front lights are on too. The power supply fan is running, and so is the CPU fan. (Now I wish I hadn't given my computer repair book to the library, but it was about 7 years old :\)

My diagnosis card is about 10+ years old so I doubt it'll even work on it.

The only other thing I know of it, is that I was trying to get this generic sound card working on her system (looked to be driver problem) but she told me it hadn't worked for almost 6 months.

One of the two CDRW drives was bad, and when I pulled it, the system started up fine. But I'm not sure which it was, since I pulled one, and made the 2nd drive the primary drive.

My insincts are saying that either the POST speaker is damaged, the CMOS battery is dead, or possibly the CPU, or BIOS chips are bad. Would I get a POST beep, if I pulled the CPU, BIOS, or CMOS battery?

Thanks for any help you can give.

Clueless in Kentucky.

 

Can you enter the BIOS screen during the initial boot pressing the delete or F1 key, depending on you system?
If the BIOS system time is wrong, then the CMOS battery may be dead. Replace it. You should also make sure that the HDD is correctly detected in BIOS.
Remove everything connected to the PC including removing your suspect CD's. If you suspect a CD problem, then first remove these and see if she boots. If still no joy, then remove everything else so all you should have is the box with keyboard, mouse and monitor connected. Make sure that the floppy drive is functional. If it's suspect then unplug it also. Remove all internal cards except the graphics card. Power up and check that the BIOS posts. Make sure the first boot option is set to your primary (OS) HDD. If it boots, then add your CD's, and any internal cards one at a time. Booting to check each time. If the OS doesn't boot you should still get a message after the BIOS has posted like missing NTLDR etc, or invalid system disk. If you suspect a corrupted OS install, then you will need to change the boot option to boot first from the XP install CD. (if the motherboard supports booting from the CD?)

 

kcredden.

That sounds like a fairly recent machine. Assuming you can't get to boot following Paul's instructions, if you can get a PCI graphics card in it and a working floppy drive, you may be able to flash the appropriate BIOS for the MoBo, which may revive it. You'll have to get the BIOS and flash program from the mfgr's web site. I doubt it's the battery, but it wouldn't hurt to replace it first to see what happens.

 

It could be a faulty PSU.

 

Some might suggest that its time to turn this over to a quaified technician.

 

Hi Paul and others who responded.

Sorry it took so long to get back I had to reinstall XP and all my programs on my own system :\

I finally got a chance to look at my cusion's system. First I feel like a first year engineering student, by not plugging it into a monitor first. But I now did, and no joy. It's not even getting a *signal* from the card (The monitor's light remains amber). But I tested the card on my own system, and it works fine.

I've pulled everything on the board, including the memory, and nothing. It's got the power light (on the MB), the power supply fan is working, plus the CPU fan, the power and HD lights are on, on the front. But nothing.

Now I'm thinking the board just needs replaced. But I want to provide my cusioun with some answers if I can. One thing I haven't seen addressed in all my spyware and other security news letters is something I just thought of: Is it possible that a system will litterly fry itself if it's overworked? When she brought it in about 2 months ago for the first time, it took nearly 10 minutes for it to start up. It had about 400+ pieces of *spyware programs* (Not cookies, which amounted to around 1,000, but programs.) It had 57 startup/piggyback programs and a 27 gig HD was stuffed to the rims, with temporary junk, and everything else. It took me a full day to clean it out, but a week later it was stuffed again. I finally just wiped the drive clean, and reinstalled XP Pro with some batch files I wrote to keep her system cleaned out and relaitively free of spyware. That worked for about a month, till she started to have these no POST beep start up problems. Now it's totally dead.

What brought this idea is just before my own system crashed, it was running hot. Now after it was cleaned out, it's running in the 90s with a room temp of 72. I found something on SETI@home's web site that suggested it could overheat your system, unless the program's CPU usage was throttled down. I've installed that program, and it seems to be working fine now.

Any clues?

 

Any clues?

Not trying to be picky here but this just doesn't add up. You originally said it had ME and that you wiped it and then installed XP Pro. Now you say you wiped it clean and "re-installed" XP Pro. Which was it? I guess thats irrelevant for now but I do have a couple of questions.

Whats the motherboard - make, model# and revision#
Whats the CPU?
Now that its out of the case - whats the soundcard?
What's the video card?
What other cards have you pulled?
What kind of memory and how many sticks?
How big is the PSU and what are the rail ratings?
What did you write your batch files in? What do they do?

A little more information will be most helpful. Can an "overworked" system fry itself? I guess anything is possible, but I've never heard of such a thing.

Sidebar: Incidently, how hot was your own system running when it crashed before you re-installed XP and all of your software?

 

Hi kcredden,

Agree that you're lookig at replacing the MoBo; so there's nothing to lose by trying to flash the bios. Overwork is not so likely the culprit as a virus; they are known to bollux up the BIOS. As R said above, we need info re the MoBo to advise you further.