If my computer won't boot.....

[aakerman]

Ok my computer has been pretty weird for a long time - sometimes it won't find my harddrives at boot, and I have to reboot for it to work.

yesterday I was installing a game, and the computer crashed, just as it normally does. But it could not boot back up! I can start it, but it just halts. I can hear it doing the "drr drr drr" counting noise that it always does, but it halts before any of the beeps.

What do you think is the faulty piece of hardware? I have tried switching video cards, to no avail.

 

[aakerman]

I suspect my PSU (Tagan crap) or my motherboard..

 

[SparkyJJO]

try another PSU first if you have a spare or can borrow one. The mobo sounds suspect too, that or the bios chip.

 

[drum]

can you give us some specifics on the parts? how old is this box?

 

[aakerman]

well can't give you any age, I have upgraded it as I went along..

it's a MSI K7N2 Delta-L motherboard (nforce2 i believe) - barton 2800, Tagan 480w psu (my third one, the two others failed - never buy tagan), kingston valueram.. hard drives are western digital, newer ones.

I guess I'll have to switch PSU's.. such a tiresome task :/

 

[mechBgon]

Get a quality PSU, and also check your HDD jumpers. If you have a WD that is all by itself on a data cable, then take its jumper cap off. That sets it to the Single Master setting, which is different from regular Master and solves some HDD-recognition issues.

 

[aakerman]

Tagan is supposed to be quality - problem is most of them are defects.
Well I just switched CPUs, and it still won't boot.

So ... cpu? mobo? Isn't the pc supposed to beep a couple of times if there is something wrong?