PC won't power up - no POST - no display

Last night while in the middle of installing some software on my other PC (Pentium 4 - Gigabyte mother board around 7 years old) there was that dreaded Windows (XP) message advising that a software problem had occurred and Windows (XP) had to shut down. I can't remember then if the PC rebooted but do remember seeing a message that the contents of memory was being written to disk. This seemed to take for ever so I pressed the RESET button on my PC.
The PC would then NOT reboot. The LEDs on the front light up as normal and I hear the normal noises from the drives disks start up, the ON lamp on my monitor turns on (as if it is receiving from the PC and comes out of its sleep state) but NOTHING is displayed on the monitor and the PC appears to hang.
I removed the memory (RAM) tried again and got the beeping noise from the motherboard as it does when no memory is present. I have tried inserting one DIMM at a time to see if it is a memory problem without success.
What other things should I check before resigning to the fact that the motherboard of CPU have died?
Remove the CMOS battery and wait before retrying?
Check power supply especially the small 4 pin 12 volt ATX socket?
Any suggestions?
Is there a Troubleshooting guide anywhere here?
Thanks

 

Hi,
First I would reseat any connectors for the monitor/graphics (if it has an add-in graphics card you can take the card out and clean the connectors with a soft pencil eraser). If it happens that the graphics has been upgraded from built-in graphics to an add-in card, try the built-in connector.

Try another monitor.

If you can see the HDD LED working as though Windows is starting up, yes, try removing the battery for approximately 30 minutes (there may be a Clear CMOS jumper on the motherboard, you should read the manual if you want to use it). For that sort of problem I treat it primarily as a graphics problem.

Matt

 

It does not seem to be booting into Windows? It may be a drive problem or some other piece of hardware. Disconnect any added hardware (including PCI cards), you can disconnect the floppy and optical drives and just try booting to the HDD, also, you can disconnect the HDD and just try booting to the Windows CD (or just a boot floppy disk).

Matt

 

Hi Matt

Thanks for your super fast reply.

The monitor is ok as I have tested it with another PC and it works ok.

The video is onboard (motherboard) and as the motherboard doesn't have an AGP socket I can't test to see if it's the video components on the motherboard.

When I try to boot up the PC does NOT sound a BEEP (as it normally does during the boot up sequence).

I have disconnected (the power supply only) disk drives and still get no display. Surely the boot up would display memory installed etc before it searches for a boot device - is this correct?

Thanks agian I am still trying different things.

 

Super fast? Only if I happen to be poking around at the time Saturday arvo I am in Melbourne at the moment and today they had a little much-needed rain.

If you don't see anything appearing on the screen, the system's BIOS is not able to load the basic drivers to see the POST screens (the beep means POST has been completed successfully, which is not happening).

Disconnect the data cables to the drives as well, it will be important. Even the act of disconnecting and later reconnecting the cables may provide a good connection, which could be the cause of the problem. Also disconnect and reconnect at the motherboard side of the cables.

Any PCI cards or other hardware connected (eg., USB devices, printers, etc)? Disconnect those.

Clear the CMOS as we spoke about.

If the system is several years old, look at the motherboard for any swollen or leaking capacitors. These are the cylindrical components that stand up off the motherboard.

Do you have any old computers available to borrow their PCI based graphics adapter to try?

Hopefully, this will be a minor problem with an added piece of hardware, it could also mean that the motherboard is coming to the end of it's days. If the m/b seems to be the problem, you should be able to salvage most of the other hardware, depending on how old it is.

Let us know how the tests go.

Matt

 

Hi Matt,

I think that I have now exhausted everything.
I have done everything you suggest and more.
I now do not even get the single BEEP at start of power up and the monitor is not activated (ie is not getting any 'signal'.
I am lucky that I have a 2 other PCs which I haven't been using. I picked them up from the school where I work (as a general assistant) as they were being thrown out. I have two PCs with 256MB ram and P4 1.5 Ghz. Not fast by today's standards but still fast enough for anything except games. THe PC which seems to have died was only 1 1.8Ghz P4 so not much faster.

By the way I know that if I transplant the HDD from the dead PC then Windows (XP) will spit the dummy as it will detect new hardware (motherboard). Is there a way to re-install Windows over the top of the existing installation so that all my installed software will be intact?

 

Thanks PC

I was thinking to try running Windows XP installation (on an already installed hard drive) and your reply confirmed that.

One last question.
If the reason for the failure of the motherboard is due to a problem with the onboard video would the installation of a PCI video card necessarily result in the motherboard working again? Surely I would have to 'turn off' the onboard video and how would that be possible if I can't boot to BIOS because of the onboard video failure (yet to be confirmed as there is not even the normal 'beep' sound from the speaker just after pressing the power on button).

 

If the PCs have been in storage, you should replace the CMOS battery. The battery will run down if the system is not connected to mains power. The battery will be flat if the time has reset to when the computer was built.

You should be able to boost the RAM in the machine you are going to use by bringing the RAM across from the second (assuming there are spare slots).

It is pretty much just a "test ". It will be hoped that the BIOS automatically detects and uses that graphics system. Just a maybe and depends very much on if the BIOS can do it. If it happened to work, there are very good, inexpensive PCI graphics cards available.

Matt

 

Hi Pete,
A new CMOS battery is certainly worth trying. If the battery was dead, the BIOS should revert to default settings and if it is in it's original hardware configuration (added hardware removed) it should(!!) start up. I was working on a Dell computer recently, which had, I suppose, similar problems. I replaced the CMOS battery, but it would still not reset. It only reset and started working when I had the 4 pin CPU power connector disconnected and tried starting it that way. When I reconnected the power connector and started up, it started working again as normal.

Yes, worth a try, it may require a "jolt" though to get the BIOS to identify and install the hardware correctly.

Starting without any RAM modules installed may be a jolt and should result in beeps warning that there is no RAM installed.

Matt

 

Checked the (CMOS) battery which shows just over 3 volts which is correct.
Left the battery out for hours.
Disconnected all drives and add-on cards.
Removed/re-installed RAM as well as CPU just in case of a bad connection.
Can't see any component(s) on the motherboard which look as if they have failed.
Still NOTHING. Power light comes on, No 'beep' sound, No display on screen.
Even with no ram installed there is no continuous beeping (indicating no ram) which sort of indicates to me that the CPU is either not working or the motherboard has a fault with sending/receiving data to the CPU.

I have arranged for a funeral (for the motherboard) and have 'moved' on to use another motherboard/CPU which I know works (P4 1.5Ghz) and which meets my needs (for my second PC).

Regards
John