Hi there
I have a home built computer that was made in 2004. (built for me by a techie guy; i have a rudimentary understanding of what the parts are but no more than that, no ability to tinker with the inside of a PC myself).
It's been used as a music workstation only, it has never been connected to the Internet, running windows XP.
I have two hard drives, one for o/s & audio apps (2 partitions), another for data (4-5 partitions)
The computer has been running like a dream for a decade, but I recently went away for a few days so shut down the power.
When I came back, I hit the power switch on the computer before plugging it back in, and it powered on briefly, presumably from some residual power left inside.
I plugged it in, hit the power again, and again, it came on briefly but then off again.
I hit the power once more and this time it powered up fully (and always does now), fans/optical drive lights come on, hard disk light is orange briefly then goes off, the green power light (bulb symbol on case) stays on - all seems ok except - I am getting this "blank screens no POST beep" problem - which I see has been discussed a bit on this forum and others.
In a nut shell: you hit the power switch, lcd leds go green briefly, the screens stay blank, screen leds goes back to orange, no POST beep, power off switch only works if you press and hold it.
The possible steps to resolve are in these youtube videos:
Simple tutorial
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4e73dtkGxiYAdvanced tutorial
https://m.youtube.com/watch?src_vid=4e73dtkGxiY&v=_EK9a-R5pss&feature=iv&annotation_id=annotation_2380649897The advice is to try each of these steps to:
1 - unplug everything from the back of the pc and power up
2 - remove cmos battery from motherboard, set caps from 1-2 position to 2-3 position to clear cmos memory.
3 - remove component by component from motherboard, trying each time to see if it fixes problem.
4 - Bread-boarding (remove motherboard from case and place on non conductive surface. try power.
if none of these resolve the issue, then one of 3 remaining components could be gone (power supply, cpu or motherboard)
I am not going to be able to do any of this work myself (obviously I've tried no.1), so I will need to get an engineer to look at it. But before I do, I have a few questions:
1 - If this was caused or triggered by a surge of residual power inside the machine, (when it was switched on with no power supply) does this suggest a prognosis? I'm trying to glean whether I may need to replace one or more components. Which leads to my next question:
2 - I've listed the machine components below - given these components are over 10yrs old, where could I get replacements or compatible alternatives?
3 - If one or more components are replaced and the problem is fixed, what does this mean for my o/s, programs and data on my hard drives - should it all just work as before once the hardware is fixed? I guess the engineer will do some level of software install, BIOS setup when installing any replacement parts etc but hopefully all else should be ok? (Unless the hard drives are the problem
)
Anyhoo, many thanks for reading - and to anyone who can give any helpful advice, many many thanks!
Best Regards
Juice
Machine componentsMotherboard
MSI MS-6758 (socket 478)
Processor
Intel P4 3ghz pc800 pga478
Memory
Corsair twin x10243200ll ddr-dimm 124mb
Hard disk 1
Seagate barracuda 7200 160gb s-ata 8mb, s-ata/150 8mb cache
Hard disk 2
Maxtor diamondmax 7200 80gb ide/ata 133
Video card
Matrox AGP millenium g550 32mb dual dvi "low profile" ddr-ram
Screens: 2x lg 17inch lcd
Case: chieftec dragon miditower
2x optical drives
lg dvd recorder ide gsa-4040b
lg cd burner ide