Help Troubleshooting

[crazymonkeyzero]

Can someone help me troubleshoot what is wrong with my fiend's computer? It was running some program and it froze all of a sudden with a black screen with a bunch of code, and stayed like that. Then we tuned it off and turned it back on and it would not boot. The fans are still spinning, but the monitor, keyboard,mouse are not getting any power.I was thinking it is most likely the power supply, but I am not sure and am by no means an expert on this stuff so could someone please tell me what would be the most likely culprit? If it is the psu or ram, I can easily replace it, but if it's something else like the mobo or cpu, it's probably not worth it because the computer is about 6 or 7 years old. Thanks for the help!

 

[ElFenix]

if fans are spinning it's probably the board or the processor. 6 or 7 years old may be bulging capacitors.

 

[JackMDS]

To find out whats wrong you need spare parts. The value of a 6-7 years old computer is less than $100, if you donot have spare parts, you might end up wasting more money on parts than the value of the whole computer.

Here is an example of commercial selling values - http://www.geeks.com/products.asp?ca...CA3D10_20jul12

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That said, the regular process is to open the computer disconnect from the Mobo all the peripheral leave as is with the PSU, CPU, Memory, and Video, keyboard and Monitor.

If it does not start into the boot/bios, it is PSU, or and Mobo, or and CPU, or and Memory, or and Video.

 

[mfenn]

I'm thinking mobo or power supply. It could also be RAM, but that it easily testable trying to run with each stick individually. That computer is recent enough to use an ATX power supply, so it wouldn't hurt to test with a spare one of those. If it isn't either one of those, the board is probably toast and is probably not worth replacing given that it is probably a P4 or original Athlon 64.

 

[crazymonkeyzero]

It's actually a 7 year old amd opteron from a workstation. The PSU has been replaced before (like 3 years ago) and it ran fine till now. But I can try putting in another in to see if it works. If not, I think it's best for my friend to get a new budget system. The intel core i3 2100 doubles as a workstation chip due to ecc support correct?

 

[mfenn]

It's actually a 7 year old amd opteron from a workstation. The PSU has been replaced before (like 3 years ago) and it ran fine till now. But I can try putting in another in to see if it works. If not, I think it's best for my friend to get a new budget system. The intel core i3 2100 doubles as a workstation chip due to ecc support correct?

I believe that the i3 2100 only supports ECC if you're using a workstation-class chipset. If you're gonna be spending that much, you might as well get a Xeon quad for only a marginal increase in overall system cost.