Computer Hope
Hardware => Hardware => Topic started by: mizhepzibah on August 10, 2011, 09:30:41 PM
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I turned on my computer this morning and it came up empty. The fans started, the power LED in the power button came on, the hard drive LED lit up for about a second, but the monitor never got a signal. I'm guessing failure at the CPU, but that's just random guessing, as I have no real training or knowledge, practically speaking. Next step?
Thank you for your time.
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Try another monitor.
Reseat your video card.
If that doesn't work try another video card, or test yours in another computer.
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Have you made any recent changes to the computer?
How old is your computer? Do you do maintenance every six months?
Has the computer had any rough treatment? falling off the desk?
Is it laptop?
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Have you made any recent changes to the computer?
I live on a circus in Japan, so every 3 months we load up and move to the next town. During that time, the computer is put on the floor, covered to guard against anything falling on it, and then it sits in the container until I can get back inside and get air conditioning going. During the travel time most recently (for about a week, about two weeks ago) the temps outside probably were in the range of 95 to 100 degrees. I think that qualifies as rough treatment. When I got the system hooked up and back on the internet, the first thing I did was reinstall Lavasoft's Adaware. I had taken up an offer to upgrade for a year at no cost, but when that time period ended, the whole program was unusable, so I just uninstalled and reinstalled the lower level free program. Upon reinstalling, the computer had a very rough time during the initial full scan, crashing twice, and since I hadn't noticed anything other than that, I assumed that there was a problem with the reinstalled software. Uninstalled again and reinstalled, same problem. Uninstalled and reinstalled, did the smart scan with no problem, so figured it was the full scan that was causing a software problem. However, the computer crashed several more times without having had the Adaware scan running, so I realized that I had something else going on. Last night, I tried to use my CD burner and found that the reader didn't seem to be working right--after burning my files to the CD, the disc would show up as blank, but the information was there when I put the disc into a different computer.
How old is your computer?
Four years old.
Do you do maintenance every six months?
Yes.
Is it laptop?
No. It's a Prime Asus tower with a Pentium 4 HT processor.
Thank you.
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100degrees Fahrenheit = ~37 C. That does not qualify as rough treatment. Most (air-cooled) computers run at idle temperatures of 43 C and above, so I don't think that's a problem.
I have experienced
The fans started, the power LED in the power button came on, the hard drive LED lit up for about a second, but the monitor never got a signal.
this with faulty ram, a faulty CPU, and believe it or not, a faulty CPU FAN.
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The hard drive and the DVD Drive can freeze a computer when they go bad. Try to remove power and data connections to both and the turn power on and see if the PC will show a smash screen or some kind of message to the effect that no drives were found.
If it is the hard drive, you may not be able to get data off it using common techniques available to consumers. If it was the DVD drive, just replace it.
But before we go further, report back nf the PC shows signs of life.
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Thanks to everyone for their input. Results:
Reseating the video card--no change. Pulled the hardware out, dusted it off, tried using the connection on the motherboard but nothing showing up on the monitor, and still no grind on the hard drive after the initial burst on power up. Video card back in use.
The CPU fan is working.
Removing power and data from the DVD and hard drives--no change. The monitor is getting some signal on power up, because the LCD screen puts information about the TV on the screen, but then it changes to "no data incoming."
Thank you.
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Okay, kids, fyi, it's Transfusion's comment about faulty RAM ftw. ;D One bad stick of RAM extracted, computer loading up like a champ! Thanks to everyone who participated, and while one doesn't want to court disappointment, one is going to mark this one FIXED!
Thanks again, everbody!