Computer won't start after being inactive for a year

I have an old athlon 3200 build pc that has been unused for a year-year 1/2. Went I upgraded my power supply in my current setup I installed the one I had been using into my old tower with a hard drive I had recently swapped as well. Bad this is...the power kicks on...fans on, keyboard on, mobo lights on....but no display on screen.

Double checked connections and tried again. No go
Began removing components, expecting a beep or something. No beep.
Changed to mobo video and removed AGP card. No go
Unhooked/removed every component except for CPU, PSU, Mobo. Nothing changes.

I'm stumped unless I have a bad mobo or CPU. The tower was well taken care off. I was also careful about stactic electicity. [grounding myself, using the little rubbery bracelet, etc] I'm really not sure what happened. I'd hate to have to replace it when I wanted it up for my kid. I have other towers but they are so old they can't even use the AGP card...and my son plays games.

 

I had a similar situation pulling an unused desktop out of a closet after a similar amount of time. I would think that starting with no battery would be fine except that you would have to reset time and date after each restart. This was not the case.

I couldn't start with no battery but also had problems as I added new devices. So stripped down to no HD or DVDROM with no battery, was still a no boot. Add a battery OK to get BIOS. Add a HD no boot. Take the HD out boots OK. Add a DVDROM boots OK. Add a HD doesn't boot. Take the HD out doesn't boot. Go back to no devices and battery boots OK. On and on...

A lot of trial and error to eventually get things up and running. So I think a battery may be a useful diagnostic tool even if it doesn't seem that important.

[In my case I had also been using the PC for parts and had connected the IDE cables to the motherboard incorrectly so when the motherboard thought it was getting a HD the cable was actually connected to the CDROM connector on the motherboard.]

 

Hmmm, you mean the CMOS battery? If its dead the pc won't start? But if I take it out the pc may start with out being able to track date/time?

edit: oh I see what you were doing. I'll look for a battery....

 

Yes, see if you can find a new/good battery.

I was just saying I had a devil of a time getting mine to boot up correctly after a long period of non-use. Normal troubleshooting steps didn't work as expected. The battery shouldn't have made a difference, in my experience, but it did for some unknown reason. Even then it was a lot of attaching and removing devices until I got it to work properly. Sometimes machines can be quirky.

 

Of all the coincidences that could happen....I had another tower with the same model cmos battery. Swapped them and voila! Now I just need a working keyboard for it and my Xp disk......

Thank you so much. I'd have never thought to check my other junk towers.

I'll temporary shut this pc down and use this keyboard to make sure I get through post...but it looks like the cmos was main killer.

 

Good work! CMOS batteries seem to be fairly standard voltage.

I still don't really understand why a battery would make a difference. I thought all it does is keep enough power going to run the clock. Seems to me any PC should start with no CMOS battery (and many do) but others won't work without the battery.

 

And a brand new one is only $3-4.