Inquiring if I am experiencing CPU failure

[trimarco52]

Hi,

I am not sure what happen to me. My granddaughter computer hard drive had failed  and I bought new hard drive and did a reinstall of windows XP operating system and installed office and other programs and it was working fine so I shut it down and took it my daughter and when I turned it on it never booted up. There is power and I can see the fan going but it seems CPU is not working, because I do not see the normal boot up cycle. The monitor is just blank other than in the beginning I see the Gateway logo but then I get a message no signal.

I am thinking possibly the CPU has failed & I would appreciate any comments or suggestion

Sincerely,
Steven F. Trimarco

[Allan]

Sounds like the connection between the monitor and the video card may need to be checked.

[trimarco52]

Hi,

Thank You for replying to my question. The video card is part of the mother board . If the video has failed on the mother board and I install a video card. Would that solve my problem ?

Once again thank you for responding to my question.

Sincerely,
Steven F. Trimarco

[Allan]

Don't know and don't want to give you bad advice. The "no signal" message generally indicates the display is not getting a signal from the system's video output, but then again you said you see the Gateway logo - which means it IS getting a signal at first. It worked before you moved it, so you might want to recheck all connections. It does not sound like a cpu issue though.

[trimarco52]

Hi,

Thank you for responding to my question. I hope you are right and it seems like connection problem, but would not the computer still boot up even if the their is no signal to the monitor ?

I ask this because when I turn on the computer nothing happens other than seeing briefly the logo on the monitor and then send a message no signal.

Thank you for you advice

Sincerely,
Steven F, Trimarco

[Allan]

You have no way of knowing how far the boot process gets if the screen isn't getting a signal. You can try a different display to make sure that's not the problem.

[trimarco52]

Hi Allen,

Thank you for your advice. I will try another monitor and see if that helps.

Once again thank you for your help !!!

Have a nice Day !

Sincerely,
Steven F. Trimarco

[Allan]

You're welcome Steven, but so far I'm not sure how much help I've actually been. Please keep us posted.

[trimarco52]

Hi Allen,

Once again Thank you for your help for it is appreciated.

I am going to my Daughter house today to try to see if my issue with the computer is the Monitor. (I am bring mine over there to see if it will boot up)

I have noticed my computer (Windows XP operating system) was loosing time so I suspected that the CMOS battery is going (Over 3yrs old). This morning I lost my CMOS setting so I found another old battery and put it in until I can get to the store, but this time it would not boot up at all. So I put back the original one it did boot up.

I thought if the CMOS battery fails you still could boot up the computer by just going into the CMOS and get it to recognize the hard drive. However I good not boot up at all with the dead battery.

So I am wondering is it possible that my granddaughter computer will not boot up either because of a dead CMOS Battery (Same age as my computer and must be 3yrs old and never replaced.

I thank you in advance in any help you can provide.

Sincerely,
Steven F. Trimarco

[Allan]

Some systems will not boot of the cmos battery is dead, but in those cases you will usually see an error message (either "cmos checksum error" or "lost system configuration" or something very similar). Still, I suppose it's possible.

[trimarco52]

Hi Allen,

Well I went tried another moderator on my granddaughter computer and had the same results of no signal when trying to boot up the computer. I then but in a new CMOS batter and it did not help for I experience no boot up of the computer. I checked the CPU fan and when turning on the computer both the CPU worked along with the other two fans.

I did notice that the jack to plug in the monitor is loose and when I look inside the computer it is surrounded by a metal casing. (The video Card is part of the motherboard)

So I look up on the Internet and found a brand new Pentium D 805, clocked at 2.66 GHz  for $60.00 and I thought that was a very good price but hesitated buying because what if it is not the CPU and I install it and still nothing happens.

Any suggestion you can make would be appreciated

Sincerely,
Steven F. Trimarco

[Allan]

I'm guessing the problem is with the internal video card/chip, but I really don't want to give you any bad info - hardware is really not my strong suit. I'll ask a couple of the hw guys to take a look at this thread. Please keep checking back.

[patio]

I stopped in on Allan's request here...

The thing that sticks out at me here is how you say the video plug at the MBoard is loose...
If you were to buy the new CPU and that is not the issue you would probably still have the existing video issue.

Is there someone you can borrow a video card from in the meantime before you spend any money and swap it in there just to test ? ?
Reason being it would tell you if in fact it is the CPU...and your money could be spent towards a video card instead of what may be a perfectly fine CPU...

An addon card is relatively easy to install and you would know from the 1st startup what may be needed to get this machine up and running again.

Hope this helps,
patio.

[trimarco52]

Hi Patio,

Thank you for the quick response. I did think of that and had some old computers but the video card would fit the slots of my Granddaughter computer. I looked at my computer and the video is part of the motherboard.

Maybe I can purchase a used video card online and if it still did not work at least I have a backup card.

When installing video card would their be any conflict with the original one ?

Once again Thank you for your help

Have a nice Day !

Sincerely,
Steven F. Trimarco

[patio]

Depending on the age of the machine you could use either a PCI vid card; AGP or PCI-E...
We'd have to know what MBoard/machine that is to advise further.
They will not conflict with each other.....PC's are designed to use 1 or the other but not both...