PC won't boot, not even to cmos

Hi, sorry about the title if it's misleading, but I'm in a bit of a hurry as I'm on a friends laptop.

The problem is with my PC, it powers up but thats about it. No visuals, my monitor doesn't even register, my PC just seems to freeze as soon as it powers up, there are no loose connections, or loose cards, I'm no expert by any means but I can see no visible reason for this. Also I can only power down my pc by switching off the power at the mains.

At a guess I'm thinking maybe my hard drive is beat as the PC seems, to me at least, to be brain dead.

Any ideas?

I'm gonna get a new hard drive anyway but if theres anything else I should look into please let me know, thank you very much.


Bryan

 

Welcome to Major Geeks. The first thing to do is remove anything that isn't required to boot up the PC. This means disconnecting all drives; floppy drive, CD/DVD drives, hard drives, disconnect 'em all from both the power and motherboard; unplug all modems, sound cards, ethernet cards, from all PCI slots; if you have on-board video, use it and remove any video card you have; remove all but one memory stick. If the PC doesn't give video still, pull the memory and try another one. Once you get video, start adding devices one at a time and reboot in between each device. As soon as it stops working, you'll know which device was responsible. If your power supply is weak you may get flakey activity after several devices are connected and drawing power. Just be sure you remove the power cord from the power supply and wait about 30 seconds between each device install or uninstall. You want to be sure everything has a chance to discharge before you start unplugging and replugging devices.

Good luck!

[dlb]

 

This might happen if your FSB is messed up for some weird reason.
I don't even know if I said that right.

It happened to me once when I installed a Coppermine into my computer which only supported 100mhz FSB. All the computer did was turn on the fans and blink the power light.

I'm pretty sure that's not very likely, as your computer usually runs.

 

Thanks for the welcome,

I tried what you suggested but to no avail, thanks though it did seem like the logical explanation, I was actually very surprised it didn't work.

 

In fact, I just had a bad thought and it involves my video card, I'll let you know if my suspicions are confirmed ( which I really hope they aren't since I built the PC for 3D animation purposes, eep! )

Edit: In fact I'm not so sure about the Video card being the problem, taking into consideration that even without video and only the basics needed to boot the PC (which still didn't work), it still froze and wouldn't turn off unless I used the switch on the power pack or at the mains.

 

Hardware is not my thing so stick with dlb for troubleshooting. Do you get a keyboard light?

Can you reset your CMOS...meaning check the jumpers or use reset button? The only reason I mention this is that I once had a jumper fall off my motherboard. It was the one you use to clear CMOS and then put back in normal position. It had fallen out of regular position and the Comp wouldn't start. I can't remember if it powered on or not. Just a thought.

 

Hmmm.... if you followed all my suggestions above, then it's down to either the power supply, or the CPU, or the motherboard (assuming you tried a different video card, or used the on board video and got the same result). You can try installing a new CMOS battery (if you haven't already). They're only about $3 or so. If you have another power supply or a friend has one you can borrow, give it a shot and again just use the basics: CPU, a known good memory stick, and a known good video card (or the on board video if you know it works). Other than this and the suggestions offered above by the other folks, I'm about out of ideas here

Good luck!
[dlb]

 

Heres exactly what happens...

Switch on the power, both the power and HDD lights stay on at a constant (no flickering at all from the HDD light), there is no lights from ANY usb powered devices including keyboard and mouse, the processor fan runs fine and at a steady rate. There is no video and there seems to be no response from the PC when I try to power down or reset it. I checked the jumpers and even reset CMOS to no avail. As I mentioned before the only way to power down is by turning off the power pack or the mains.

My knowledge here is pretty basic, knowing my luck there is probably some obvious flaw I should be describing here but haven't noticed it.

Thanks for all your suggestions, I'll have to try and hijack a friends PC to test my hardware on, but since most of them buy ready built numbers with accursed warranties it could take some persuading (or cunning)

If anyone has any info, even if just to point out my ignorance on this subject, feel free to post.

Edit: Also I haven't changed any hardware for around 3 months, even then it was only a heatsink and fan, I was also monitoring my CPU temp after I installed the sink and fan regularly and it was fine.