Tower won't boot, black screen

Hello!
I'm fixing an Acer tower for a friend. I don't know a lot about it but it is approx 9 years old, no display on the monitor but does light up after pushing the power on button. Both fans on the inside are working, the CD Rom makes a noise after power-on and will even spin a CD for 3 seconds and then dies... no other booting, no white writing on monitor, nothing.

It is very clean on the inside, almost no dust on the fans or anywhere else as if it wasn't used much at all. The capacitors look like new with no obvious signs of deterioration or bursting.

It has a 500GB sata hard drive which I pulled and reinstalled on another computer - it seems to work but has a little damage. It booted up to XP just fine when transferred out of the Acer.

There is an IDE interface on the mobo for the CD Rom, there is an IDE connection for a floppy there also. I tried a floppy drive in that floppy IDE connector - it got juice because it lit up, but doesn't boot a floppy disk. No noise from it either. I tried an IDE hard drive on that working CD Rom IDE gray power cable - no lights or noise - nothing.

I tried another graphics card which had a fan attached onto the card. The card got electricity because the fan spun, but still no display. Even tried another monitor - that wasn't it either.

To me, there is electricity going out to the graphics slot, the CD Rom IDE connector, the floppy connector and the fans.

IS THERE ANYTHING THAT I COULD TRY THAT I MISSED, TO GET THIS MACHINE TO BOOT AND GIVE ME SOME WHITE WRITING ON MY MONITOR? Is it foolhardly to even try to boot out of USB port somehow with a flash drive?
To do a BIOS flash, doesn't the keyboard have to work? The mouse and keyboard don't boot up either. No lights on Keyboard - the only thing that appears to respond is the CD Rom that will actually spin for 3 seconds before it dies. I guess this is the Black Screen of Death. Any help would be appreciated.

 

Hi my friend , welcome to MG's :major

I am thinking that the machine is old enough , you can remove the cmos battery from the motherboard for a minute or so , afterwards pull the battery back restarting the machine , even you can try another PSU because is very old , at the case there is a sticker with the model :wave

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000239.htm

 

Thank you for your kind advice.

I did try the battery removal - no luck there.

I do have several extra power supplies but they are all 20 pin connections. The motherboard on this bad Acer has a 24-pin connector. Can I use one of my spare power supplies and just plug in 20 pins and leave the extra 4-pins open? I am attaching a picture of the problem I will have if I use one of my spare 20 pin power supplies.

Also, please teach me this. If the computer was hardly ever used and just sat there, (aside from the fans and HD), do the motherboard components go bad due to age? The mobo parts are not moving... if the computer is not used in say 5 years, can the non-moving parts go bad and cause this type of Acer problem where the mobo is shorted out?

BTW, the lesson I found on this website's _Post No Beeps section was very informative and educational. I learned some things.

Please advise.

 

You are able to use 20 pin psu to your motherboard also the most common problem in old machines is either the psu or hdd :wave

 

WOW!!!

I just got the computer to boot up a bit!!
Some white writing on the monitor... a few beeps...

I changed the battery and that seemed to do the trick. Imagine that.

I am going to have to work on it some more to see if I can get the hard drive to engage as well. It is a BIG improvement. Frankly, I thought the unit was toast.

It hasn't booted up fully yet, so it is still in limbo. And I had to use the newer graphics card with the fan as well. The onboard graphics didn't work. So it needed a new graphics card too.

I'll get back to you. Only 20 hours work on this thing, that's all it takes, a lot of persistence. I was ready to strip the whole thing and toss the case out onto the street. And let's face it, a 9 year old tower...it had no reason to ever start again.

Thank you both for all your great ideas, and I will get back to you with the final result... may take a day or so.

 

I have a very similar issue.
On turning the PC on at the front panel, the power is present, fans spin, power LED on, USB ports powered, tries all the disks (HD light flashes for sub-second), but no boot activity and the screen remains completely black.
That is most often.
The computer does boot up occasionally, after powering down, and trying again..and again, at the nth attempt where n is between 3 and ...say 100. Not invariably, powering off at the PSU and/or unplugging mains seems to help.
Things are not reproducible.
When it is going to boot up, the cpu fan spins only slowly or not at at all (when it's not going to boot, the CPU fan spins very rapidly from the moment of turning the PC on). I have installed Speedfan to make the CPU fan spin and cool the CPU as soon as possible (else the fan doesn't start until T>60C [Tmax = 67C], and it runs a bit hot, say 30C above ambient). I have on a small number of occasions got the error message on my black screen "Fan error...service required...press F2 to continue boot...etc" despite replacing the CPU fan.
The events about powering down makes me suspect a capacitor charge state.
You say the inside of the PC is dust free. Is it possible that it was cleaned before you received it ? The reason I say this is that my PC is 12 years old now, and I've never changed the thermal compound between the CPU and the CPU heatsink, and I have suspected a thermal problem in the past (the CPU temperature monitors don't support this though - speedfan, MBM5).
Once I do get the PC to boot it stays up for many days (before e.g., a Windows auto update requires a reboot ! although restarting isn't usually as problematic as booting from "cold")

I agree with plodr that you should replace BIOS battery with a brand new one.

Problem not solved, I wish you luck, and please report any progress !

Dumb_Question
14.July.2013
Compaq Presario S5160UK DT261A under XP/SP3
Processor - Celeron 2.7 GHz
Motherboard - MSI MS-6577 v2.1
RAM - 1GB + 512MB (1GB +1GB max) DDR PC2700
PSU - Octigen 300W model 10270PSOTG ('upgraded' from original Bestec 250W PSU [in 2011?])
Nvidia GeForce 6200 graphics card in AGP slot.

 

Hello,
This is an update on my dead Acer tower, which now boots.
The Acer runs OK but has some damage to the board. The onboard graphics device seems to short out the whole works when I try to plug my monitor back in there. I'm not going to do that again. Last night I tried it, and it kicked some of my drivers off and a few other nasty results as well as not booting at all. So there is definately a problem with the onboard graphics plug-in and it isn't an option anymore.
I have a spare ATI Radeon graphics card (PCI-e size) which works, so I'm going to use even though the bracket is a bit short - I'll adapt some sort of metal cover-up for the top of the bracket because I really need a full size bracket. So that part is solved.
I reformatted the hard drive. The hard drive doesn't appear quite right, after running for a while, it gets slow as can be, like when running a virus app, or defragging for while. After a while, the hard drive doesn't seem to have the strength to continue, just sits there and doesn't continue with the scans. I did test the HDs and they came up OK, no errors. I may get a cheapo refurb HD on Ebay and see what happens there.
This is not the first desktop unit I have run across with a "partially" fried motherboard. It helps to have a spare PCI slot or some other way to compensate in order to get another year out of the unit.
Corporal, and if the unit is old, I surely would'nt do any Windows updates or upgrades, whatever. I have those completely turned off. They carry too much weight, to heavy a load for an old machine. If you have loaded them in your machine already then it is a little late - but if you reformat, I would definately leave them off. - All of them. IE doesn't work well without some of the updates so I use Google Chrome and so far so good. Chrome doesn't seem to complain without the updates.
Corporal, I am surely not as knowledgeable as any of you on these forums, but what I do have is tremendous persistence. If you have the time and energy to continue with that grand old 12 yr machine, if I were in your shoes, uninstall that Speedfan (why did you need it in the first place?). And try another PSU, even though you said you replaced it not long ago.
Thank you so much for helping me, all of you.

 

I am no computer expert - I hoped you might benefit from my expeience.

I installed speedfan in order to start the CPU fan as soon as possible after a successful boot, when the CPU does not start until core temp >60C. With speedfan I am able to start the CPU fan before the temperature has reached 50C.

I have got some other PSUs, eg, a seasonic 600W and an an OCZ 500W, much higher power and current rating than I think I need, but I can't face putting in another PSU although I know it really isn't that difficult or time-consuming.

I have turned off auto updates and I update manually occasionally - goes for Java, Adobe etc

I'd use Chrome (because it's supposed to to more basic without unnecessary options) but I don't like Google's ts&cs

Dumb_Question
14.July.2013

 

Question,

Do you have another power supply that you could borrow, like from another machine? Yes, 500 and 600W seems a bit much. You must find one from another machine that maybe you could borrow from, just to test it out. I've got a bunch of old clunkers here that I've pulled from old machines over the years. If you lived close enough to Long Island, I'd loan you one!!

I am just not experienced enough to fathom that CPU problem. You say the computer not booting is a temperature-related problem?

But you are getting "fan" messages complaining about some issues with the fan. Are you sure that Speedfan program is not getting in the way? I would eliminate it as a possible problem.

Once I get this old Acer running up to snuff again, I think I will sell it off to someone local here for $75 or so. Hey, where would you find another PC for sale for $75? And they would surely get at least a year or 2 of good use out of it before any problems. A good deal for someone, when I get done with it. And fun for me.

 

Long Island might as well be the dark side of the moon !
I could try one of high power PSUs, they only deliver what is required, not their rated max. powers !
About the temperature problem - I only suggest that as a possible problem - one of many possibilities. I rarely get the fan error - about 6 times in the last 18 months, and it's a new problem. What I don't understand about that is that I kept on getting it after I tried a new fan, but it correlates with the odd fan behaviour on boot/no boot in some sense. The fan error is (relatively) new compared to the boot problem. Maybe there is more than one problem ? I haven't realy got any idea, and the PC is not doing any work - it's become a 'project'
Speedfan is a respected problem, and I only installed to help me make the fan work.
I have another, newer, laptop now, and occasionally my local PC shop has reverse auctions (£10 per wek reduction until it's sold) selling guaranteed PCs for <$200...and then there's always ebay...

Dumb_Question
14.July.2013

 

Question,

Some computers have thermostats.... on the board somewhere.... I know they exist.

In some of the Setup / CMOS's, I've seen the temperature listed right in the specs, so I know there are thermostats somewhere. Whether or not they are repairable is a wonder and would be interesting to find out in your particular situation. In a car, they go bad often and cause all kinds of grief, a tiny little plug on the block.

Can you read a schematic, and use an Ohm Meter to find faulty circuits? Maybe you could find the thermostat. I wish I had that skill.

 

->PFHappy
Some computers / processors do have have "thermometers" in-built, and these are accessible in the BIOS. However. when the BIOS is accessed the computer s not doing anything, so it is in an atypical state. I know P4 processors have thermostat which shuts them down them them they dangerously hot, but that does not always prevent chip damage. Many computers have a "Winbond" chip on the motherboard which reads various sensors on the motherboard like the temperaturs of certain components, and the readings of this chip are accessible to software programs like like MBM5, Speedfan, but it's not always easy to figure out what these readings mean.

Dumb_Question
15.Jully.2013

 

Question,

This thread needs to be marked as "Solved", so that others may benefit....
I don't see how to do that.

Best wishes....