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Computer not booting up -- Where to start?

C

choli

Junior Member
Hi Folks,

Hopefully this will be a simple problem that has a simple solution. My wife came home from work & said that she started hearing weird noises coming from her computer (we have 3 desktop machines in our place). She tried shutting down the machine to no avail, tried holding down the power button to no avail & finally unplugged it.

She plugged it back in but didn't turn it back on. Later on I went to look at it & all lights including the cd & dvd rom drive lights were flashing, but when I tried turning it on, nothing happened.

I am thinking that its either the PS, CPU, or Motherboard

If anybody has had a problem like this, I would much appreciate what the fix was

Thanks

Chris
 
it could be anything.. but my best guess is the motherboard. try reseating things such as the cpu, ram, add in cards, etc... try disconnecting things such as all drives, etc and checking the cables connecting things. by the way, the lights on everything flashes, but do fans spin up at all? if your pc has a speaker connected to the motherboard or on it, try turning the computer on without the memory in the system. the computer SHOULD beep at you. if it does then i doubt the motherboard is the problem.
 
Originally posted by: choli
Hi Folks,

Hopefully this will be a simple problem that has a simple solution. My wife came home from work & said that she started hearing weird noises coming from her computer (we have 3 desktop machines in our place). She tried shutting down the machine to no avail, tried holding down the power button to no avail & finally unplugged it.

She plugged it back in but didn't turn it back on. Later on I went to look at it & all lights including the cd & dvd rom drive lights were flashing, but when I tried turning it on, nothing happened.

I am thinking that its either the PS, CPU, or Motherboard

If anybody has had a problem like this, I would much appreciate what the fix was

Thanks

Chris
Click to expand...
Sorry to disapoint, but this does not sound like a simple problem. It definitely sounds like something is broken hardware wise. If its something minor, you can probably fix it yourself. If its something major, you may just decide to buy a new computer (depending on how old this one is). Here are some additional questions and initial thoughts ...

What type of computer is it? CPU? How old? Did you put it together or buy it assembled?

When you say it didn't turn back on, are you saying pushing the power button did not turn on the PSU at all? If so, the PSU is probably bad. Even if it is powering up, the sound could have been nasty things happening inside the PSU. They normally blow an internal fuse if they go bad, but if not, I supppse a bad PSU could do nasty things. This is VERY unlikely IMO.

The remainder assumes the PSU is powering up.

The sound could have been the CPU fan (you could watch to see if it spins up when you power the machine). If the CPU fan went, it could have cooked the processor.

Did you hear any beeps as it tried to boot. If the CPU fan is good, and you get no POST and no beeps, the next guess is the MB.

If you are getting beeps, it could be the video card or the memory (or the MB). The beeps (combinations of long and short) should be documented in the manual or available on line. With beeps you can usually figure out what's gone bad. They are a GOOD thing.

Your info is pretty sketchy, so these are just some guesses.

You may be able to fix this if you can diagnose what's going on. Bad PSUs and video cards are usually easy. But if its not giving any clues, you might consider taking to a mom and pop computer store to fix. They'll probably charge you $50 + parts to get you back up and running. They have all the test equipment and see these types of things every day. I've had good luck sending friends to the small local stores, rather than the big chains. YMMV
 
The machine is an E-machine, that is about 3 yrs old. Pent Celeron 2.8ghz. When the PS is plugged into the board, when i tried pushing the power button nothing comes on like it was unplugged from the wall outlet (IT WAS plugged in when I tried turning it on) No beeps, no fans trying to spin, etc.

One thing that I figured I would try first would be the PS, to see if thats the issue mainly because if the board & cpu are bad, she will probably want to get something faster in put it into another case.
 
i seen the classic emachines like that. both were struck by lightning according to me.. not only were those psu?s bad, the mobos, the ram, even the harddrives were bad as no dead or dying. I hope your not in that boat, good luck when you try a spare psu, if it still doesn?t turn on and doesn?t beep without ram installed, I would say everything is going to be bad from my experiences.
 
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