Environmental issues, it seems...

Right, so I had 3 working PCs which are all socket 462 (or whatever -- Socket A, basically). All pretty old stuff but I knew they all worked fine.

I took them to my place for the first time ever and take them apart with the intention of cleaning them up entirely and building 2 decent PCs out of them and then the other can be left to have the Athlon 900

I put them all back together properly and when I turned them on, connected to a monitor, none of them gave a signal to the monitor. The monitor established a connection, but received no signal.

I got all three graphics cards (2 x FX5200 and a GF2), but them in those silvery plastic bags that PC components normally come in, took them to my other house and tested them all in my fully working PC. They all worked fine with no problems. (In fact, I played a little game to see if I could take a graphics card out in the middle of Windows running and then put another in and see if it ran still. Didn't post a signal, so I had to resest. )

So yeah, they all worked fine. I then took them to my other house again and they didn't work. So yeah, you're probably thinking that the mobos are broken or something. Well, I put my graphics card from the working PC at the other house in and it worked fine. I put it down, and then put one of the other 3 in (2 x FX5200 and GF2) and they didn't work, but maybe that's because I actually put them down before trying them.

Then, I put my other one back in, the one which actually gave a signal to the monitor, and it didn't work again. Put it back in this (working) PC at the other house (where I'm typing this) and it works fine again. So, nothing seems to have a problem working here, and it appears to only be the graphics cards that are affected by the odd conditions of my other place.

Bear in mind, that when I took them apart, I had my components laid out of my bed and on the carpet and stuff. I've heard many times that I should do this, but it has never caused me problems before. And, I actually my I haven't broken my PC components, I've just got some of them (probably the graphics cards) in a state where they can't functions in the other house.

But, if I put my PC components on the carpet and stuff here, it doesn't do anything.

So, as I've deducted that my problem is either to do with the current state of the graphics cards or mobos, what can I do change this? Or, what is the actual cause of the problem so I can spray platinum dust over my other house to prevent the evil atsmosphere from possessing my sacred components again?

Basically, it would be nice if I was either informed, with detail, everything about environmental issues like mine so I can fill gaps in my knowledge. Or, if you led me to some articles which would at least give me enough information for this problem to be solved.

Thanks in advance...

- Parl

 

Reset the CMOS on every PC.

 

I think I already did that.

Thanks though.