PC & cycling sound at startup?

When I start my HP desktop, the light comes on, then goes off, on, off, mean while, the monitor is showing no signal and there is no flashing of the yellow/orange light on the tower. It's as though the pc is trying to start but can't quite make up it's mind if it's going to. I believe it is the fans that are making the cycling sound. They cut on and then off as the pc does this cycling. Any idea as how to fix it? Once it boots up it's fine

 

Have you opened up the PC and watched the fans when you bootup? Cleaned the dust bunnies out lately?

 

cycling sound?? Like a bike?? If the computer is old i suppose this is normal. Mine used to sound like an airplane.

 

The inside of the pc has recently been cleaned, so it's not the old dust bunnies. (this was happening before I cleaned it)
I guess I didn't explain this very well. Cycling as in going on, off, on, off, until it finally boots up. It's makes no noise to speak of, no beeping, no clunking just the sound of the fans going on and off, that's what I mean by cycling. The pc is about 2 1/2 years old.

 

Is there nothing visible on the monitor when the power is cycling. The loading screen or anything? Can you try a different monitor? Does the computer beep when it starts up? Does it beep more than once?

 

This is a new monitor and it also did this on this old one. No beeps. I get a No Signal on the monitor if I keep moving the mouse, other wise I think it's blank. Actually I get the no signal if I turn the monitor off and then on.
Only sound is the fans cycling on and off.

 

Im trying to find out if the computer is restarting itself while its starting up. Does it take a very different amount of time to come turn on each time? you can also check in eventviewer to see if it is happening in windows. Start > Run > eventvwr. Or am I going way beyong the problem. Is the problem just the noise?

 

Hi. What are we looking for once in eventvwr? I am not concerned by the fan noise (that's normal) but am concerned that this is not the way the pc is supposed to boot up. I hit the power up button and then we start the on, no it's off, no, it's on again. It does this about 4 or 5 times before it finally boots up. There have been times that it would bootup and I had to retry because it just sat there. Night before last I left it on, put it in sleep mode and it took me forever to get the darn thing to boot up. I had to turn it off and on several times. This is definitely not normal.

 

Okay I have narrowed it down to 3 things: Bios configuration, Virus Infection or Windows being Windows. Because this happens as soon as you turn the computer on with nothing on the screen I'm beginning to think something is wrong with the BIOS configuration. But because you cant see anything while it is tuning on, there is not a lot we can try. LCD monitors sometimes don't like the resolutions that computers use when they start up. Do you ever open the computer up and change stuff around like adding and removing floppy drives? This can cause error messages and unexpected delays while it is trying to start up.

A few questions to narrow it down:
Do you happen to have any of those old CRT monitors lying around?
Do you have a virus scanner on the computer? have you run it recently?
Did you change anything before this started happening?
Do you ever open the computer up and change stuff around like adding and removing floppy drives?

 

I'm pretty sure we got rid of the CRT monitor. Last time the computer was opened was to change out the power supply, thinking that was the problem, it wasn't. I run a quick scan every night and a complete one weekly. I can't remember if I changed anything before this happened, have d/loaded programs/games though.
I'm waiting for the day that it doesn't bootup at all. I am sure that this on/off is not helping the PC any. I'm pretty sure I checked the bios. (a friend talked me thru it) can't remember what he said, so it must have been ok.