Black screen, need guidance

[leftcoastopossum]

Here is my sad tale. It started with a bsod, then various error messages which microsofts error program said was a driver issue. I updated a couple of drivers but most were up to date and I had little success. My son attempted to play warcraft 3 and received an "unable to write to memory" error message, before I could troubleshoot that my monitor screen went black, and remains that way. I noticed that my heat sink fan had quit, and although I can hear the computer running, decided that perhaps I had fried my cpu, was a good excuse to upgrade anyway. Installed new cpu today ( amd 2200) along with new heat sink and fan and still no go. Tried swapping video cards, no help. Tried a known good monitor, still no picture. Took out all 3 sticks of ram, one at a time, no difference. At this point I'm open to suggestions. I'm a novice at troubleshooting and would appreciate any advice. Thanks in advance.

 

[mechBgon]

Do you know what make & model of motherboard the computer has? If you're not sure, see what markings you can dredge up from its surface, such as "A7V266-C" or whatnot. It may be that your motherboard only supports the older Palomino-core AthlonXP's (all 2200+'s are the newer Thoroughbred core). So you might have a compound problem. If the motherboard can be identified then we can most likely find out whether it supports the Thoroughbred CPUs.

For example, if you look at this photo, see where it says "EP-8RDA" above the round heatsink. That's the kind of marking we want 🙂 If it also says "rev 1.03" or some revision number, that's relevant as well.

Welcome to the Forums 🙂

 

[Looney]

Are you getting any POST codes when you boot up? Or at least the keyboard beep to know all is well?

 

[leftcoastopossum]

The motherboard is a soltek 75drv2. The computer has been more or less stable for a year now, my first build. There are no beeps upon start up now. All fans kick on, monitor displays a message stating it's operating and to check pc and cable. As I said I hooked up another monitor but that didn't correct the problem.

 

[Looney]

Originally posted by: leftcoastopossum
The motherboard is a soltek 75drv2. The computer has been more or less stable for a year now, my first build. There are no beeps upon start up now. All fans kick on, monitor displays a message stating it's operating and to check pc and cable. As I said I hooked up another monitor but that didn't correct the problem.

Hm might be the powersupply. Is there another powersupply you can use to check?

 

[Harvey]

Originally posted by: leftcoastopossum
Installed new cpu today ( amd 2200) along with new heat sink and fan and still no go.

I found some intersting links on Soltek's SL-75DRV2 Q & A page. For one thing, even with the latest BIOS they say the fastest CPU supported by this board is a XP 2100+. I don't know if there are enough differences between the 2100+ and your 2200+, but unless you can unlock it, or the board allows you to set the multiplier for your chip manually, it might lock up as you describe.

Hope that helps. 🙂

 

[knithat]

do you have the manual for the motherboard? all motherboards have their own beep codes. no beeps means something, though i'm not familiar with that mobo so i can't say what it is. if you've got another machine, which is sounds like you do, i'd try swapping out parts (power supply, video card, et cetera) and see if you can narrow it down that way. you might also want to try and disconnecting everything, motherboard included, cleaning out the inside of the case, and reseating everything. there might be something in the case that's causing a grounding problem with the mobo.

no quick fix. just be a little stubborn about it and you'll narrow it down eventually. good luck!