Monitor won't click on

[Stojakapimp]

Last night before I went to bed I restarted my computer, but after windows shut down, nothing was showing on my monitor. It just had that orangeish light on that is supposed to be green, so what could my problem be? I just have no clue because this happened after I restarted...not after I changed anything or touched the motherboard. I just bought practically all new parts for my computer...a new mobo, new cpu, new ram, and a new video card. One time last night I was able to finally have the monitor click over when i turned on the computer, but the computer just stalled I think before the RAM check and didn't do anything. Now, once again, my monitor won't even flick on. So I thought that maybe this is a video card problem, but could it be anything else? Maybe PSU? My PSU is only 300 I believe..and I run an Athlon XP 2100+ and have a Radeon 9500 Pro. Any suggestions out there?

 

[blueribb]

It could be one of many things but you should start with the most obvious.

1) Unplug and re-seat all cables, pc cards and memory.

2) If you overclock, then by all means set everything back to original specs

3) Try another single stick of known good memory

4) Try another power supply

Good Luck

 

[Stojakapimp]

Originally posted by: blueribb
It could be one of many things but you should start with the most obvious.

1) Unplug and re-seat all cables, pc cards and memory.

2) If you overclock, then by all means set everything back to original specs

3) Try another single stick of known good memory

4) Try another power supply

Good Luck

Thanks for the tips. I've tried reconnecting all the IDE and power cables, but since I didn't have a screwdriver, I have yet to take out the video card and reconnect that.

But i'll try the other things when I get back home today.

Also, I tried clearing the CMOS. Would that even help anything? I'm not even sure if I did it correctly, but I never started the computer up while the jumper was in the clear CMOS mode. I just moved the jumper over, waited like 20 seconds, and then moved it back. didn't fix anything though, so I didn't mess anything up by doing that right?

 

[blueribb]

No, clearing the CMOS won't hurt anything but you will have to reset the clock and other items
later on.

If you're not sure, just use default or optimized settings.

 

[Stojakapimp]

So i just tried reconnecting all the IDE cables and such and it still doesn't work. right now I only have my floppy disk drive and my hard drive connected. I tried replacing my video card with an older one, but it did the same thing. So I'm thinking that it's either my ram or my power supply. I haven't tried any other ram yet because all i have is SDRAM which isn't supported by my mobo. But if the problem were with the power supply, would everything still be powering up? Like all all the fans get power and it sounds like the harddrive and floppy drive are kicking in. I just have no idea which seems more likely to be the problem...the ram or the power supply. Keep in mind, my ram is only a few weeks old...Crucial 512 DDR...but my PSU is perhaps maybe about a year old.

 

[blueribb]

Just because the fans runs doesn't mean the power supply is good. There are 5 or more separate
voltages supplied for various jobs.

This is the order of failure when a computer won't boot:

1) Memory
2) Shorted or bad PC card (modem, video card, sound card, etc)
3) Power Supply
4) Shorted or bad Hard Drive
4) CPU
6) Motherboard


The motherboard will still boot up with the hard drive and cdrom/s disconnected, so try turning on computer with all these cables off. (signal and power)

Did you reseat the memory and power supply to motherboard cable ?

 

[Looney]

Are you getting any POST codes at all (the beeps when you first start the computer)? It could be either the powersupply isn't good enough (any way you can get another PS to test it with?), or it could be the videocard itself... but with the videocard, you should at least hear POST codes.

Anyways, do this... take apart your computer system again, and put it on something safe like a cardboard box (because it could be shorting out on the case if it wasn't installed properly)... then put in the CPU, ram, and videocard. Boot, and see if it goes on. If it does, then start adding other thigns like harddrive, floppy drive, cdrom, etc... but do it at one at a time. If everything works, then put everything in the motherboard.... if you come up to something that stalls the system like that, then it's either the device is bad, or you need a bigger powersupply.