PC semi boots repeatedly

My 10 year old pc was shut off today and when i turn it back on it shows the SONY screen followed by a pentium 4 screen, then I hear the fans turn off then on again followed by the 2 screens mentioned above.

 

Sony prebuilt from 2000.
2 sticks of 256 ram
nvidia 440 graphics
wd harddrive
pentium 4? cpu
asus p4s0 vx
300 wat psu..?

 

Just an update I took the harddrive out and connected it to my other pc and got the files off. Before this I tried booting for a ubuntu dvd and that didn't do anything it continued to flash thoes 2 screens

 

10 Year old PC = OLD Power Supply , or Ram is going out...

My bet is it is the power supply, so take it to a little computer shop and have them test your PSU unless you can do it yourself with another computer.

 

Oh ya, especially after 10 years!:eek I'll say one thing, that was a 'geeks' PC in those days.

 

BTW, was it losing time too? It very well could be a bad battery. They only last some 3 to 5 years on average.

 

Why didn't I think of that! :eek

 

No time loss as far as I know, I will get the PSU checked I guess, I'll see how much they charge

 

SO I took everything out of the case and pluggedin the GPU/CPU/1 stick RAM and plugged my monitor in. I am not getting a display, should i be?

 

Laptops don't normally display a screen if there's a BIOS error (no hard drive connected, etc.), but desktops generally do display the POST. In short, yes, you should have a display.

Do you hear fans running, or anything going on inside the machine? If not, then it's likely a dead power supply (or less likely, motherboard).

 

Don't bother as your machine is basically worthless to fix in this throw away society, sad to say. Save your hard earned money to buy a new one and donate the current one.

 

Its a desktop yes.

mscmc. The psu fan runs, and cpu fan runs, the gpu doesn't have a fan, and isn't showing any kind of screen on my monitor.

augiedoggie. Yes I know this pc is very old and very replaceable but I am getting good practice atm on a cheap pc xD.

I actually took it all apart and just ran it with cpu/gpu/ram and put it back together again =].. but still getting same error when back together

 

It doesn't sound like your power supply is totally dead, but it COULD be to the point of not being able to power the graphics card.

Does the motherboard have onboard video? Another possibility is that your video card took a crap, and if you have a spare, or if you have onboard video to try using, you can see if that changes your computer's situation any.

 

I can't argue with that at all and I'll be watching this thread to see if I can learn anything here, always something to learn.

 

Onboard video would show a plug in the back right? Then no there is none.

I don't have a spare gpu. I think I may be stuck now without taking things somewhere to be tested.

 

OHH YEAH!,

Hey I had a bad Video card and it made it some my computer would not start and would Semi boot, so check that PSU an check that Vid card on another Computer.

I forgot that Vid cards do that weird stuff