comp won't start

I built my mom a computer a number of years ago. thing is way old. I can't even tell you what processor it has in it cause I forget. I'm sure I could look it up on newegg if it was needed info. Anyway. She just bought a mac cause this thing seemed to have died. I want to get it running well enough to use it to host my website. I know I don't need anything speedy or even remotely expensive to have this work so I'm looking to cut as many corners as possible.

It used to start up and give me an error about not being able to read the hard drive, and now it doesn't even post. I don't even get a PC beep when I turn it on. What could be causing this? Thanks!

 

Try it with no battery or replace the battery. See if it will POST.

 

now it starts up and goes to the MSI motherboard screen and freezes there. we're making progress!

 

Is your keyboard connected? Probably best to get a new battery or try putting the old battery back in and see if you have any juice left in it (at least until you can get anew one). Sometimes they will run with no battery sometimes it causes irregularities in POST.

 

Keyboard plugged in, no mouse tho. Don't think that's an issue. I'm going to get a battery right now I'll report back in about a half an hour, thank you so very much for your quick replies.

 

just makin sure the ps2 port for the keyboard is usually purple right not green?
I'm like 99% sure I'm right but figured I'd ask. New battery installed, no dice still just freezes at the motherboard screen. WHat now?

 

The keyboard is purple. Just checking you are using a PS/2 keyboard not a USB keyboard with a PS/2 adapter (sometimes the USB w/adapter aren't recognized on older machines).

I'm not a hardware expert. I happened to pull out an old Compaq out of a closet last week that I had trouble getting started. I thought I had put it away working but realized I had pulled some cables and such for parts at some point so I can just relate my experience.

When trying to boot I got nothing until I pulled the battery. Then I got a garbled display. Replaced the battery and got a display but no drives. Disconnected the HD and got a CD drive recognized. Reconnected the HD got nothing. Changed data cable on the HD and connected it got a garbled screen. Checked my HD and CD jumpers. I kept going till I got my HD recognized then worried about the CD drive which I eventually got recognized. The point being that there may be trial and error and it may have something to do with getting things up to operating temperature. I'm not sure.

I would start with disconnecting the data cable and/or the power cable from the HD and the CD drive. See if it POSTS. If not try it with just one module of RAM. If you have more than one module of RAM try it with just the other one. If none of that works then I would try to clear the CMOS. Usually a jumper near the battery. If you know your motherboard number you can get a diagram from the web. Or it should be printed on the board in tiny writing if you see the jumper location. I've seen various instructions for clearing the CMOS but I do it with the PC unplugged but the battery in.

 

Trial and error is practically the only effective way to troubleshoot hardware. Which of course sucks.

My suggestion: Start disconnecting parts and see if you can get it to post. A good motherboard posts to BIOS if you disconnect the hard drive and you can verify in BIOS that things are working. If it won't, then disconnect the optical drive. If that still doesn't work disconnect the video card, et cetera. Once you know which one component it is that's messing everything up, you can replace it.

Oh, and if it is the motherboard itself, it will fail to post no matter what you do. That would suck even more.

 

Got it to post. Now my problem lies in reinstalling windows. It says hit any button to boot from cd. Then it freezes as it's inspecting my hardware configuration. Now what?

 

Does it freeze at the same point every time? Where is it?

Do you have access to another CD-drive or another drive cable you can try?

Details, young padawan, details...

 

How did you get it to POST?

Since it has been unused for a while and was giving your mother trouble, I would download the HD manufacturer's utility bootable CD and test your HD. Do the short test and then the extended test. I realize Windows installation hasn't gotten far enough to write files to that disk but if it is bad it could be causing a problem and you'll want to make sure it is OK before installing anyway.

 

Good question. How did you? :confused

Ignore my post until after you've followed Sach's advice and tested the integrity of the hard drive.

 

exactly!!!

 

I unplugged everything and plugged it back in and it posted. I have no idea! must have been a loose connection. and yes, it always freezes at the same point. It says setup is inspecting your computers hardware configuration and then the screen goes black and it stays that way. I'll check out that program you suggested and report back

 

I have no idea what type of MB I have. I don't know where to get the diagnostic utility for the HDD. It's an MSI board but that's all I know. Any suggestions?

 

MSi silk-screens the model number onto the board, somewhere between the PCI slots. If you can find that number and post it here, we can find you the utilities.

 

K8N Neo4H

 

You want to check out your HD usually Seagate/Maxtor or Western Digital. WD/LifeGuard Tools http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=502&sid=30&lang=en for IDE drives.

SeaGate Tools--Choose for DOS bootable.

You will have to burn the ISO file as an image to a CD using Imgburn or Nero or other burning software to make it bootable. http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools

 

Sorry I can't seem to edit my posts. The second link above is for Seagate tools.
The first link is for Western Digital for an IDE(PATA) drive which an older computer probably has.

 

Hm... that board is not on MSI's website... Mind double-checking that number for me? I can find K8N Neo4-F, but not the one with the H. Do you happen to have a box or manual laying around to verify with?

Here are MSI K8N Neo4-F utilities:

PCB 1.0

PCB 3.0

 

that's the right board. And thanks for the update, yes I'm running the first scan you provided sach2. The quick scan found no errors the second scan is halfway done. I'll report back after it's finished. yes it's an IDE drive, old I know, but like I said, I don't want to put much cash if anything into this comp, it's just to host a website. I thank you for your help.

 

no errors in either test, guess that means my HDD is functioning properly. What's next?

 

This is where "I'm not a hardware expert comes in".

Seems to me if the MB posts and finds the HD and CDROM and you can boot from CD the board is OK. Maybe, check that the data cables to your HD and CD are positioned correctly. On the motherboard at the IDE connectors it should have printing telling you which connector is for HD/Primary/0 and which is CD/secondary/1 make sure the cable for 0 is connected to the HD.

Other than that I have to give it some thought. Possibly try another XP installation disc if you have one.

Any one want to jump in? Please!

 

my cables are plugged in the right way so that's not it. I have 3 different versions of XP and none of them work. I tried XP home, Pro, and 64bit. I have legit copies of all 3 disks. I get the same error. Like I said. I'm just trying to get this thing to work, I plan on running server 2007 on it once I get it up and running, xp is just the test to see if everything is ok. I'm not gonna spring for server 2007 if the thing aint running. Thanks for all your help so far.

 

Okay, I have had dinner and have a nice relaxing drink next to me, so here we go:

The fact that you can boot the system enough to run the hard drive test Sach2 gave you links to rules out a number of things:

1. Motherboard -- would not post if it was dead.

2. CPU -- same thing.

3. RAM -- it might have started the hard drive diagnostic test, but with bad RAM it should not have been able to finish. Bad RAM gives some of the most spectacular error displays you'll ever see on a running computer.

4. HDD -- it passed the tests, that means it's fine.

What do we have left? Everything else! :-D

We have a few clues to help us narrow this down. For one, you have tried three different XP discs and none of them worked. Since the odds of having three bad OS installation discs at once are roughly equal to your chances of winning at the state lottery (and we are going to assume you're smart enough to keep your CDs in a case of some kind when they're not in use so they aren't scratched beyond repair ), the CDs are not the problem.

Your problem is most likely with the hardware your PC uses to read the discs. That means your CD drive, and its cables, and that is your next stop.

Pull a verified reliable CD drive from a working system and swap them. If that works, the CD drive was your problem. If it doesn't, put your original CD drive back, and swap cables. If that works, the cable was the problem. If that doesn't work either, post back with as much detail as you can get your hands on and we will move on from there.

 

There are 2 cd drives in the system. Ones a DVD drive, and one is a cd burner. I've tried both drives to read the disks. No dice. I have more IDE cables lying around here than I know what to do with, modern computers don't use em. I've tried one other cable, I could keep going and try some more, but I'm pretty sure this isn't the prob at this point. Could it possibly be the CPU fan? I have a Thermaltake Beetle on there. I bought it for the lights I was like 18 or something, stupid purchase I know, the stock fan was fine. The fan that plugs into the mb doesn't spin. but there is a fan on the other side of the heatsink that just plugs into a 4 pin molex. and that fan does spin. I doubt very seriously the thing is overheating this heatsink is HUGE and there is a fan on it so it's not overheating I can say that with certainty. But maybe since the fan that plugs into the MB isn't spinning the system is freezing up to protect itself? I don't know, I'm probably just making stuff up lol. My other computer used to have a temperature problem and it would shut itself off, but that's a newer model. Any thoughts?

 

The fan post is beyond my abilities to answer.

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Could there be anything in BIOS that doesn't match up with your current configuration. It sounds like everything is being recognized correctly. A look around BIOS just to see if something doesn't look right couldn't hurt or possibly setting to defaults and exiting.

Maybe trying something like a Live Linux CD (such as Linux Mint) which should load you up to a Windows looking desktop will give you an error or not load correctly and will give you a hint as to which piece of hardware isn't being recognized/reported correctly?

 

I did restore the bios to default. I don't know what else it could possibly be. I'm as stumped as stumped can be. Where do I get linux and what do I do? Ive never used it before

 

My only thought was that the HD utility disk would see your HD no matter what position it was in. So if in some unknown way, it was not set as Primary/Master it could still be checked for integrity by the utility but Windows wouldn't recognize it. But I have to say you should get an error like no HD found from the installation CD. And just so you realize during the Windows installation process "Checking your system Configuration" is usually less than 30 seconds so the process is aborting/hanging very early.

I've had mostly good luck with Linux Mint on a couple of computers. Basically, you download the ISO about 700mb, burn to CD and boot from it. It loads a Linux operating system (takes about 3-5 minutes) but recognizes your graphics card, networking card etc. So you end up with a fully functioning Desktop with internet access and programs such as Firefox at your disposal. There is a "Start" button like Windows to access the available programs.

The reason I say to try it is that it has to get information about your current configuration like Windows installation disc does but if it fails early on it might give you an error message that Windows suppresses.

The download link is here http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php you can use direct download or torrent both will be fairly fast.

 

The size of the heatsink means nothing if it's not working properly. If that's the one that isn't, not spinning the CPU will toast itself if it keeps running.

To troubleshoot the CPU fan and heatsink, remove the heatsink and reseat it. Make sure the thermalpaste is okay and that there's no air bubbles in it, if in doubt that it's doing it's job, reapply a very thin coat.

When you reset the BIOS to defaults, did you use the setting in the BIOS, or did you actually pull the CMOS battery from the board? If it was not the battery method, do that now. Unplug the system, press the power button to drain the board before working on it, pull the battery, and press the power button again for good measure.

 

I did pull the battery, but did not hit the power button like you said, I will do that tonight when I get home. I will also reseat my heatsink.

 

Just for fun unplug the HD and try the setup disc. If it goes through the hardware detection screen ok then you'll want to figure a way to delete any existing partitions before trying to run setup again.

 

Puppy Linux can do that. Burn the iso to a bootable cd, and when it goes through boot type in 'puppy pfix=ram' as the boot option. It will load everything in the RAM and won't mount your hard drive or in any way write to it, so you basically get a fully running desktop and OS without a hard drive involved.

Puppy comes the gparted partition manager, and it will let you delete all the partitions on the hard drive. You can create new NTFS partitions with gparted too if you like, but it's probably a better idea to let Windows do that during install.

 

Wanted to let you know I didn't forget about this post. It's been a while but I've been busy. I got a hard drive that I dug out of another machine I had laying around, and it works fine. Not sure why the old one passed the tests, but I put in a new one, reseated the heat sink and it works fine. Thank you for all of your help. Major geeks rocks!

 

Thanks for posting back!

Some time when your bored--you could try hooking the questionable HD up as a slave and deleting the existing partitions. Then see if the XP CD lets you install. I don't remember where I saw that it might be a solution but since the HD passed integrity checks it might still be serviceable if existing partitions are deleted.

 

I'll give it a try in a few days. I don't really think I'll have the time to mess with it for a while, like I said, I plan to build a website and use it as a server. but I still have to build the site lol. I've been busy as can be, I will try to get to it at some point tomorrow just to let you know if it works or not, but I thank you so very much for all of your help, and I apologize for the delay in getting back to you. I work part time at a radio station, it's not glorious by any means but it's a foot in the door, and when they tell you you can have extra hours you just take them. Thanks again! I will report back.