black screen on start up

[josephrynard]

Please someone help me... I got this computer from my brother who got it from his boss.
It powers up but the screen stays black (monitor doesnt go out of stand by).
It has:
PC chips M848A rev:2.1 mother board
AMD Duron 800MHz-1300MHz/ Morgan processor
ATI radeon 9200 video card, ATI radeon 9200se, and a 3dfx video card it came with
Maxtor DiamondMax 9 hard drive

I have 3 diffrent video cards and all of them are working on my other desktop so i ruled that out.
I am not sure if it has an OS installed previosly?
please comment.

[computeruler]

You tried all the different graphics cards? All just one at a time? Have you tried a different monitor?

[josephrynard]

I have tried all video cards and they all work on my main desk top with the same monitor, I
have even switched my hard drives and memory sticks still nothing

[computeruler]

So then the only other things would have to be the power supply or the motherboard then. Proabably the power supply.  Try to get one adn test it with that

[Karnac]

Seeing this is a used PC, have a look and see if you have any bulging or split capacitors. Bad caps will cause this and a variety of other symptoms. PCs built in the late 1990's to as recent as 2007 have this problem and as time passes I expect more issues like this to arise. I read elsewhere that caps have a lifespan of around 32000 hours, but have been known to bulge with as little as 200 hours on them.
Something to remember if you have a machine about to go out of warranty.

[josephrynard]

Okay my power supply is a powerman FSP250-60GTA 250 watts seems pretty low , and all my caps look great no cracks or bulgies

[josephrynard]

Okay i only connected the Mother Board and hard drive to the battery and now I can see my cmos/ bios set up screen.

[nash]

try this i ve tried this method before...

firstly it might be faulty ram,

2ndly Reset your motherboard bios it might slove the issue..

and if your motherboard Vga is enabled dsable it//

[josephrynard]

Problem solved thank you very much Computeruler I just needed a bigger power supply

[computeruler]

Yup 250 watts is very weak

[kuszmania9999]

you might want to check these

http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp