PC sometimes boots up - if not "no signal displayed" on monitor

[devilman]

hi everyone
please can you help me. my pc (P4 3.4 ghz) sometimes boots up and sometimes doesnt. i have checked all power cables ie to the hard drive and they are, as far as i can tell are 100% working.however even though the HD is getting warm under neath the lights on my box front panel do not light up (red and green light) when it doesnt boot up and when it does boot up the lights come on and hard drive is warm and pc operates just fine. sometimes it boots sometimes it doesnt - when it doesnt i get the "no signal" on my monitor and the no lights on the front box
what could the problem be?
the HD is fairly new and is not connecting through IDE cables. there is a red cable to the motherboard and a power cable.
i just give up.
could it be my graphics card?
any help would be much appreciated
thanks

[Shynnie]

How many HD do you have connected?
It could be the power that is not getting into the HD or the mainboard is not powered on. Make sure that your HD is well connected to the power cable.

More info needed.

[patio]

You have a SATA HDD. Is this the drive your OS is installed to ? ?
Are there any error messages at all on startup besides the "no signal" one ? ?
How long has it been like this ? ?
What happened prior to this ? ?

Even though that was a pretty long paragraph there you haven't given us much to go on...

[Dam1an]

Any time ou get "no signal" on your screen, your monitor is not receiving anything from your video card.  If your hard drive is spinning and you get all the wonderful sounds as if you were actualy booting up, minus the visual, your video is somehow not working. 

Check the calbe going from the video card to the monitor, make sure it's on nice and tight.  *censored*, even try reseating it.  If that doesn't work, try reseating the video card itself.  While you have it out, clean it out with some air duster.  (note, anytime you add/remove parts inside the computer, unplug it from power)

See if any of that helps and report back.

[devilman]

hi guys
thanks for the speedy response.
just to give more info on this one
i only have one HDD on which XP pro is loaded
my graphics card is a NVIDIA 256 mb
i have since removed the graphics card and unplugged the monitor cable completely and the same thing is happening with no change! no lights on my front panel display - just my DVD rom that lights up but thats about it
again the hard drive is warm underneath if that counts for anything
im close to throwing the pc out the window at this stage
its only 6 months old and this has been happening now for 3 of those 6 months
what else could it be? power supply problem? the MB has the green permanent light on and the fan on the actual PCU spins so its getting power there
i just give up
thanks guys for your help

[Shynnie]

Hi

Thanks for info we needed it so much to figure out your Bull problem.

Three things could be demaged.
1. Your RAM has a huge effect on the display.
2. Your HD its warming up but the boot sector is corrupt.
3. Your processor the least but could be

Do a feasibility study and take out the RAM and plug it back or use your friends RAM make sure that every thing is working.

As aligned 1.2.3 try them out.

I have a big distbin at my house i can bring it then you put your PC in it then i'm off.
Throughing it out of the window its not safe Microsoft my sue you for that. 

[devilman]

hi guys
this will be my last post i promise
thanks for all your responses
so i have unplugged everything from printer to speakers
even my dvd rom has been unplugged
even the monitor and graphics card
and we have the same story
sometimes i have a green power light and the drive reads and boots
other times its dead..nothing..nudda!!
but the fan spins and power is on all the time regardless - sometimes getting the permanent green power light and some hard drive action - other times nothing
i checked the RAM which seems fine
not sure where the boot sector in BIOS is though
but when the machine boots its perfect - no problems
i have even swopped the SATA cable and changed power connectors
i can heard the drive spinning though which is a good thing
the only other thing that i can conclude is that my pwer supply is faulty???
if its not then time for a new hard drive i reckon
penny for your thoughts?

[patio]

Well it can be 3 things...
1) The HDD itself. The only way to test this is to swap it into another machine and run it for a few days to see if it acts up.
Problem with this you would have to wipe your info and re-install XP on it in the other machine for a full test. It will not run simply by swapping it.
2) The SATA controller on the MBoard is flakey.
Only way to test this would be swapping in a different SATA drive again doing as stated above.
3) The PSU. This is the easiest test. Borrow a known good one of equal or greater wattage and swap it in there for a few days...if the problem stops buy a new PSU.


P.S. Does your board have more than one SATA connector and have you tried the other one ? ?
P.S.S. If it is the PSU don't buy a cheap one for a replacement.