Gateway logo displays but nothing else

Am working on a Gateway Select 750 desktop. When you turn the machine on it comes up with Gateways logo but that is it. I get no post code beeps, dont hear the h.d. spin up - nothing even a floppy is not being accessed. Have tested the power supply and it is working just fine, have removed h.d. to just display card and h.d. still nothing, have recided all connections and still nothing. Have run a pci post card and it gives me a 38 as its digital readout which when looking at the manual doesnt help in anyway. Have swapped h.d.'s and still nothing, have reset the cmos and again nothing. When I removed the jumper from pins 1 and 2 and place on 2 and 3 it boots up telling me its checking nvram but it does nothing else. It just sits there forever. Unable to enter cmos table hitting f2 does not respond.

Am leaning toward to blown system board being that the controllers do not want to respond not even the floppy.

Anyone have a guess.

 

3 to 4 years old. really strange situation. client when she called me for assistance told me that she was moving the machine and tipped it forward and apparently hit the power button and it shut off. when she tried to turn it back on nothing happened except for the logo screen. she also mentioned that she was curious about the 115/220 switch by the power cord and that she did move it back and forth. she doesnt think she had it set to 220 and powered it on. again she doesnt think she did. but then again who knows. other than that all she said she has done recently is blow the dust out with her compressor at about 30psi which should not be a problem.

usually when I get a machine with a bad board my pci post card will give me a correct response plus its usually pretty obvious. this time I have no idea what a code 38 means and the manual doesnt say anything concrete. its acting like a dead board but then why would the logo screen come up. usually when its dead its dead and the way the floppy is not responding and the h.d. not spinning. i dont know on this one. have done all the text book things to do. just tried a brain flash to see if psu was giving enough power to open the cd rom drives and it did so probably not psu.

beats me got me stumped. why is the **** logo screen the only thing displaying ??????

 

I don't think that would have done any harm anyway.

Any chance trash is in one of the bus slots or under the system board?
Only thing I could find on Google was concerning the Nvida video card and Gateway Logo.
I know we are doing some far reaches here. Did she like break / bend any pins in the monitor video cable? Try a different video card?

From the reset jumper pins on the system board? Have you tried removing the CMOS battery to clear everything?

 

Sounds like you have covered most things.
You can press the Esc key when you see the logo, that will show you what is happening during the POST. What line of information does it stop at?

Do you have any other RAM to try? If it has more than 1 stick, just try running one.

You have removed all added hardware (PCI cards etc)?

Have a look at the capacitors on the motherboard if any are buldged, swollen or leaking.

Moving (knocking, bumping, kicking, punching or generally attacking) the machine while it is going is not good, but effects the harddrive the most. Could try reseating the CPU...if you have to separate the heatsink from the chip then you will need to replace the thermal compound.

I would not discount that there is still a problem with the PSU.

Matt
Edit: check that the cleaning did not push all the dust underneath the motherboard.

 

Have reblown out the machine even under the board and it is clean.

Have already removed the cmos battery and even tried a new one with no results.

No pins bent using my monitor now not hers.

Will try replacing the agp with one of mine to see if that works. Unfortunately, there is no integrated video connection on this machine. First time I've seen that.

Nope cant use the esc key does not respond in fact the keyboard does not light up at all when powered up. Mine as well as hers. The logo screen comes up immediately with no post beeps nothing.

Have tried different dimms no effect. Have even tried different slots for the memory.

Yes, have removed all devices except the h.d. and the display.

Board looks okay checked that out right away thinking that maybe a lightning hit or something but nothing visible.

I agree most times when machine is roughed up the h.d. is most effected but tried different h.d. nothing.

Will try separating the cpu from the heatsink is a single edge processor will also try a different psu.

Thanks for all input. Strange bird here thats for sure.

 

Okay more to add. Took out the processor and blew it out and it was nasty. Still nothing. Installed a different agp card and when machine is turned on it brings up the dos windows with the agp info then goes to the gateway logo and nothing more happens just sits there. No response from the keyboard trying to get into the bios keyboard lights flash then nothing no numlock or caplock function. Tried different psu nothing different. Still no access to h.d. or floppy drive. It keeps looking like the board because of no access to h.d. or floppy but where is the logo coming from and why with another graphics card is it seeing it ??????

Starting to pull my hair out.

 

I second all that mattman said, and i'd emphasize the following.

That's the agp bios, not dos, and I think it indicates that at least some of mobo bios code is working, and I think the mobo bios is the source ot the splash screen (logo).

Suggest you disconnect both cables from h.d. if you haven't, and try to get into bios with agp card in place that showed agp info and splash screen (logo). You should be able to get into the bios if it and/or the mobo is alive and if they're receiving adaquate power, but no beep at post is a very bad sign.

I know of no reliable test to differentiate bios, mobo, or psu problems except subtitution of known good parts after stripping down to essentials. I agree with mattman that the psu is still suspect, as well as the h.d.

All and all, I think you have done a heroic job, and , depending on your client's resources, it may be a good time to replace the computer.

 

Okay thought we lost the site for a bit must have had some problems.

Have for quite some time used a little plug device that test power supplies and its been very accurate. Green lights mean its working, no lights mean its dead and a red light means its working but if connected to other devices it could be damaging to them. So I am confident that the psu's I have used are good power supplies. As far as testing for the motherboard and bios I agree theres nothing that I've ever found that can test them outside of windows.

Have disconnected the h.d. so now all that is hocked up is the graphics card the new one and still I cannot get into the setup function. Again the graphics card show its variables then goes to Gateways logo and stops there. Have used 2 other known good h.d.'s and a known good power supply. After retalking to the client its now clear that the power button was not pushed in accidentally but as she was tipping the machine forward it just shut off. Asked her if she heard a pop and she couldnt remember if it was a pop or just a shut down noise.

Machine has drove me nuts and unfortunately I am not a big enough company to keep on hand boards or cpu's for swapping purposes. I carry the things that seem to go out frequently or the client never had things like a couple power supplies atx, virus and firewall sft, a couple pc133 dimms, a couple burners. Minor things like that but no boards or processors.

I think with the different power supply and 2 other h.d.'s I've tried plus the fact I cant access the floppy in fact it dont even light up when system first turned on and no beep codes it has to be the board.

Now when I remove the jumper from the cmos and set on pins 2 & 3 it does come up with the dos window and says its checking nvram .. and goes no further. Just sits there with .. and no more. Also when I remove the graphic card and turn machine on it does beep indicating no graphic card.

Again I am stumped. Someone tell me its the system board and its time for the client to buy a new system before I end up bald.

I thank you all for your input it is good to throw these things at other folks and get you thoughts.

 

Second that!

It's not worth driving yourself crazy when it could be a physical fault with the system. Give yourself a little time to settle and collect your thoughts.

Try disconnecting all drives and the keyboard and mouse. Add them back one at a time if it starts to go through POST.

Try spraying all the slots (video, RAM, PCI) with contact cleaner.

Can't think of much else apart from setting up the motherboard outside the case on a sheet of cardboard to check if there may be a short to the board.

Don't know if everyone would agree, but at that stage I try starting without RAM installed. No beeps then would pretty much confirm it was dead.


You could always think of it as a learning experience (that's what I tell myself )

Matt

 

Thanks for the compliment. I hate when a machine beats me like this but have spent so much time on this one machine that now I am a little behind on the others I am working on. Will most likely that it apart totally without the case and see if there is a short somewhere but it does seem like the board is the problem. I know this client is not well off financially so it bothers me that I cant help them out in this situation other than only charging them for 1 hour of diagnostic time and giving them as good a quote for a new system as I can give anyone.

I removed the ram from the system and booted with no beep codes at all. Only time I get any beeping is when I remove the jumper from pins 1 and 2 and dont put it on pins 2 and 3 then it beeps.

 

gghartman, found this doing a Google. My guess you've already checked these tho.

Another thought, when I use to do board level repairs alot of them had inline fuses. If I remember they were Green in color. The IBM PS2 (not Playstation 2) , had issues with blowing this fuse if the keyboard was removed / or plugged in while the system was running. This didn't kill the system, just the keyboard wouldn't work. If you see any of these on the MOBO, I'd check them.

 

Boy I havent seen fuses in pc's since the old ibm mod50's I think it was. The board looks clean have taken a flashlight and magnifying glass and looked it over pretty well and see nothing bulging or leaking.

Thanks

 

I see your age is showing too Back in the day they all had them somewhere on the board. Bet I still have a couple in my old pc repair bag if I could find it I'm talking back when we sold 40 "meg " hard drives for $450.00 installed. Partitioned c:30 d:10 of course one had to use a>Debug g=c800:5
Guess the MOBO don't have em anymore

 

Yep, pretty old in this business. Actually worked with the first pc gates and ibm put out back in 81. A little different than they are now thats for sure. Back then being a mainframe guy I didnt think the pc had a chance against the big old mainframes. Boy was I wrong. Wish I'd have brought ms stock back then. I could retire. I remember when machines didnt have a hard drive but 2 - 5.25" floppy drives one for the program and the other for your data. Even worked on the old cpm op system way ahead of its time back then but never made an inpact like gates did. Even had one of those commordore tv hockup machine. Did my first programming code on one of them.

 

Ah...the commordore 64 Did my first board level repairs on those and the Apple II They were really bad about ram chips. NO chip sockets on most of those. Had to de-solder and re-solder. Only charged parts cost and hour labor. Commordore had a device we could plug in and it would flash a screen code, like 3 flashes meant chip #1 was bad etc. Only problem it did that with the first bad one it found. You would replace that one and get a different flash code. One would end up replace all 8 chips sometimes. LOL

 

LDTate

Your not so young yourself if you've remember those devices and worked on them. I stopped sodering back in probably 88 or 89 had to many holes in my hands from the hot soder that I swore I'd never do that again. So I buy everything now and let someone else get holes in their bodies. One I remember the most was the TI hocked into the tv think I still have it actually probably a collectors item by now.

I like things better now a days. No really messing with irq's or memory address or emm software. Much easier now adays but still technologically challenging enough to pay the bills. Me I was a GE Senior Analyst until the crash a few years ago and then I found that no one wanted to hire an old guy like me for the bucks I was used to making. Decided to start my own business and as long as I pay the bills I would be happy. Live on a lake so I can now call my own shots and if I want to go fishing or something I can. No boss's to argue with life is good - sometimes.

 

outdone?

Not to be outdone, I just want to say that my first pc had NO hdd, only 32KILOBytes of ram and two floppy drives, one sided yet, that read 120MB of data. It came with CPM and I typed in the first edition of fig-Forth to play with.

 

Sparrow

I see we have another old timer and one who has worked with cpm and from the cities. I used to live in Blaine when I worked for GE. I contracted at Minnegasco for 4 years.

CPM was a pretty good op system except like I said the inventor never made anything like it. I think back in those days ibm wanted to buy the rights to cpm from the inventory but he turned them down and so bill gates came into the picture. I'm sure the cpm inventor is kicking himself in the butt now. I still have a cpm machine with all the documentation. It what was called a laptop but its a monster. Has I think about a 4 or 5 inch screen with a pull out keyboard. Tried to sell it once at a flea auction but it wasnt a good seller.

 

Ok, now I know why it has Senior Member under our names.