Need some help, please read!

Ok guys this is weird.
A friend brought me her pc, her son was doing his homework and was looking for some chinese music for his project. So he was probably on some dodgy sites.
PC froze, all went weird. His dad pulled the power and rebooted.

It stops on the Acer logo screen.

Here's the odd part, I can't get it to go any further because the PC will not recognise a keyboard.

Tried USB and Ps2 keyboards, both in good working order.

If I plug the PS2 in while powered on I get the lights for maybe a second, then nothing.

Even tried a usb keyboard with a PS2 converter.

Even weirder is the PS2 and USB mouse work just fine (meaning the led lights up)

This PC is a :

Acer Aspire desktop.
ASE380 - ED420M

Windows XP SP3.

I'm thinking maybe some part of the mobo is fried or maybe the PSU is toasted.
But in my knowledge I don't really see how either of these make sense since the mouse will fire and it does post to the Acer screen.

Any ideas?

 

Hi

I hope you've tried having the PS/2 keyboard plugged in before turning on the computer. PS/2 is NOT plug and play, it has to be plugged in before starting the machine.

 

Yes. To simplify... I have tried all possible combinations of connections at all possible timings.

eg:
Mouse/usb, KB usb
mouse/usb kb ps2
no mouse kb ps2
etc etc...
All tried from power off to hot/live plug ins... and yes, I wiggled them lol

Also every port has been tried, all usb ports work for mouse, none for keyboard.

Thanks for reply though

I'm really thinking it's the mobo, I've gone off the idea of PSU because it's powering the GPU and HDD, CD drive etc, mobo is looking shadier by the minute.

 

If you're homing in on the mobo, why not try pulling the CMOS battery, resetting BIOS? You might also try disconnecting everything (HD, monitor, opticals), and start from scratch.

 

Agreed.

Clear CMOS, and play like Michael Finnegan...

 

Yeah I was heading that way, was kind of hoping I might not have to.
Have tried disconnecting, even swapping out ram.

 

Edit: I'm afraid I misread the first post. I didn't see that you determined your mouse worked fine because the mouse lit up, and hoped you were able to boot to Windows without the mouse.

What happens if you try to boot without any keyboard connected? Are you able to enter the BIOS setup screens?

 

How, with no keyboard?

 

@Digital.... What good would the malware forum do me if I can't use the keyboard? ...
At present I cannot get anywhere near windows or BIOS or safe mode or boot menu or anything except the logo screen with the option ....
"Press Del for startup or F12 for Boot menu"
... and I can't "press" anything because it wont see a keyboard lol

@plodr... Yeah HDD is fine, I plugged it into mine to retrieve the boys school work for him.

Told you guys it was weird.

 

Try that CMOS step, see if you get any change in symptoms at all. You might also visually inspect the board for any burn tracks, bulging caps, etc.

For that matter, you got a spare PSU? You never know...

There is a BIOS download (it'll be located under Desktop > Aspire > Aspire E380) for that model - you might try flashing, although it's seems problematic if the procedure asks for keyboard input.

 

I am going to try the cmos thing when I get home from work.

Unfortunately I don't have a spare PSU with the correct connectors, but I'm hazzarding a guess that if it's got enough to power the GPU, mouse, HDD, CD drive and everything else then it's unlikely, although as I said it had crossed my mind.

The BIOS download would be nice, but once again I cannot get into anything to be able to do that.

In short.... I cannot move off the Acer screen on boot up, it wont go any further on it's own and I cannot press any keys because the keyboard is not recognised.

Thanks for replies though guys, will let you know how the cmos goes.

 

They were two separate questions:
1. What happens if you boot without a keyboard?
2. Are you able to enter the BIOS with the keyboard?

With the second question I'm asking whether the keyboard works up until the BIOS fiishes loading.

Edit: It's moot anyways because Nedlamar has since said the keyboard is unusable from the the moment the power button is turned on.

 

Nope, clearing cmos didn't work.

Got to be the mobo, told her about it and she's fine with buying a new pc, she only needs a simple PC for web browsing etc and I can get all her files to her no problem, plus she gets the extra HDD, Optical drive and possibly RAM.

Only reason I advised her to get new PC is because IF I can find the mobo it'll be around $65 plus shipping etc so about $100 then another $125 for XP or more for other OS's or $350 for a new PC.

 

Here are a few other thoughts:
1. You said you switched out RAM, but I would also suggest testing each RAM slot (ie test with just one slot filled, then another, etc)
2. Booting with no keyboard connected at all - does it continue to stick at the logo screen?
3. Try booting from a CD (removing the hard drive if necessary to force it to boot from CD)

I suspect you're right about the mobo though, so the last suggestion is she could remove the hard drive and sell the rest of the laptop on ebay for $100+ even with the suspected broken motherboard advertised.

 

@94dgrif.... Yes all have been tried, none worked lol

@Digital... I understand what you're saying dude and have tried the windows thing, but the fact remains that the PC with or without keyboard, with or without HDD, will not pass the ACER screen. Now correct me if I'm wrong but I've never heard of a virus or malware that can be active before windows has even tried to boot, I realize windows can become corrupted by a bug but it can't prevent me from getting into BIOS. Also as I've said, how would you go about fixing it without the use of a keyboard when a keystroke is needed to continue past the point it's stuck at?

 

I think what threw several of us off was:

Now that you've confirmed that the problem is exactly the same without any keyboard connected at all (external or internal), then the problem isn't that the keyboard isn't recognised, it's that the computer never gets past the very first stage of the BIOS. That alone tells us the problem is the CPU, RAM (which you've already eliminated), BIOS, or the mobo (including the connections through which all the above attach). Given how the problem started, I really agree that the mobo is the most likely.

 

Ok sorry for confusion, the reason I said it was not recognising the keyboard was because the mouse was active in the same slots the keyboard wouldn't work in.

But I think it's fair to say mobo is toast, thanks guys

 

I don't really see what else it could be, I've seen dead ram and cpu's and psu's, HDD's etc and they all let you get to the BIOS with the exception of a toasted PSU and then nothing happens at all. Would like to hear your theory on what else it could possibly be

 

I've seen bad RAM slots on the MOBO keep the screen black throughout, and corrupt BIOS reach the manufacturer logo and stop here (as you are seeing here). I can't think of a scenario the PSU would be the cause, but can think of a short on the MOBO doing this. Basically my opinion is that with all the tests done so far, working theories all involve the MOBO having a fault (if you include the BIOS as being on the MOBO).

 

I was gonna suggest the Harddrive myself because twice now in a row i ran into computers that when you turn them on you would get the POST screen (Acer, Dell, HP whatever) and not go any further or would just restart and turned out to be bad HDD's one seemed like a bad power supply or bad motherboard but the second i swapped the HDD it booted fine. The second one was being used and was on the internet and Avast popped up something and said something about something trying to use the internet connection and the computer turned off and would not turn back on with the HDD installed swapped in another HDD and all was fine.


I think i would try gutting the system to a barebone and start from there but i have seen weird things like that before like one Compaq i own the PCI-E slot will not give any video out any PCI-E card but windows and the BIOS says the Slot is fine so its a glitch in the BIOS not switching over the video from on-board to PCI-E.... Before throwing money at it i will do everything you can think of from pulling the whole system apart and cleaning to pulling the battery to reseatting the CPU,Ram, power connectors.

 

I had that as a definite possibility too, but I had Nedlamar try booting from a CD with no HDD connected, so it's ruled out unfortunately.

 

Ok the only things that have not actually been tested are the mobo, CPU and PSU.

HDD not only worked fine for me to pull files from it when plugged into a diff PC but also problem persisted when booting with no drive.
RAM was swapped out and tried in all possible combinations and with no RAM inserted.
Optical drive disconnected.

GPU onboard as is everything else.

This leaves...

PSU
CPU
Motherboard

Thanks for all thoughts though guys, she's going to let it die since she just bought a laptop and I'm going to clean off HDD and put it in an external case for her.

 

Have you tried to flash the BIOS from an .iso, burned to CD-ROM, or floppy if applicable?