My comp died last night

[hixen]

Hi

I allways sleep with my computer turned on (intel p4 1.7ghz, no oc) and it have been rock stable since i bought it allmost 2 years ago (i know it's old)

I woke up this morning and it was all quiet in my room, so I figured we had a power failure. But to my suprise that was not the case. And I didnt recall turning off my computer, since my girlfriend was at her place (why can't girls sleep with a computer turned on?) anyway.

I went up, and hit the on button, but nothing happend. strange i thought, this dosent happen to me, my computer never fails me.. i tried some more times but nothing happend.

so I checked to see if the the power cable was plugged in correctly, but still it didnt start.
so i unplugged all cables, and opend it.

to see if it got any power at all, i plugged in the cable and a small green light on my mobo turned on, ah I thought now it works, but no.. plain dead.

then i started to think, what can be wrong.. it dosent start at all, not even a slightest sympton of wanting to boot.

So, i thought hey.. let's ask someone for advice..

so do anyone have any ideas what can be wrong with my computer.. is it the mobo that is dead or the power supply.. I thought it would still try to boot if there was something wrong memory, hd, gfx, etc.. so anyone got any ideas were i should start?

thx in advance for your help

 

[egale]

My first guess is that the power supply went. If nothing happens when you try and boot, it is before the hard drive even comes into play. I suppose the memory and or cpu could have died too but I think the power supply is a more likely culprit.

You can try removing all memory, cards and cables and then reseat everything and try again but I doubt it will do much good.

 

[daveybrat]

sounds exactly like a bad power supply to me.

 

[boomerang]

I don't know how long you had it unplugged. You may want to unplug it for 5 or 10 minutes or so. A lot of Power Supplies, if you have a power interruption, will shut down and not start back up unless unplugged for 5 or 10 minutes.

The power interruptions doesn't have to be long enough to make your clocks blink, etc. Just a tiny little blip will do it.

Try that first before going any further. The 5 to 10 minutes is an exaggeration, but 1 minute is often not enough.

 

[hixen]

sorry I was away shooting a comerical for some dental care company, but now I'm back.

to egale & boomerang:

first of all, my computer have been unplugged for more then 8 hours, i did try removing everything, since I 4-5 years ago had a celeron 300a, that sometime refused to start, and then only thing that worked was to remove all parts, and put them back again (i guess there was some simple failure somewere, but I couldnt find it back then, thats old and not the case now, anyway) I tried then without, just mobo, just mobo & memory, just mobo & memory & hd etc..

my next question is, when i connect the power cable to the power supply a small light turns on the mobo, does that mean.. THAT the power supply is working, or can it still be something WRONG with it?

thx in advance again

 

[boomerang]

Try this. Find the connector from the Power Switch on your case and disconnect it from the motherboard.

Make momentary contact across those two pins on the motherboard. A phillips screwdriver works very well for this.

It's possible your Power Switch has taken a dump, although this is unlikely. If it has, this will start your system. If it doesn't start I would try a different PS.

The light on, means there is power to the board, and yes, there could still be a problem with the PS.

 

[DanTMWTMP]

heh, no one mentioned this yet, but it's worth a shot:

try resetting the cmos.

 

[hixen]

ok, i will try that as soon as possible

both the screwdriver and reseting the cmos..

another question: if the mobo battery have no power left, can that make the computer not to start? or does that only make my system load default settings every time i try to boot?

 

[DanTMWTMP]

i think all that does is that your internal time clock goes erratic and insane

 

[amdskip]

Bios battery being dead won't hurt anything really. Its just that any settings u change in the bios will not be saved. Replace the battery if in doubt.

 

[dWhisper]

Typically what you see with a dead CMOS battery is an error that sounds like:
"CMOS Checksum Bad" or "BIOS Settings ERROR"

A lot of time it will just revert back to the default settings on some things, but the biggest indicator of the battery being bad will be a different time almost every time you turn it on. However, it's like any other battery, it should show signs of dying before it ever goes dead. In that light, unless you were getting errors before it died, it most likely isn't an issue.

I agree with the rest, power supply sounds like a likely culprit.

The light you see on the motherboard is just a power continuity light. That means that the motherboard is currently connected to a power source. All memory requires that some small amount of voltage is always passed to the board through the ATX connector. It's basically a warning that says do not remove memory if this light is on, since it can hot-spot the board. It is not, in any way, an indicator of a working power supply. A dead power supply can still provide basic current to the board, since that's stright from the wall outlet.

When a power supply goes dead, it will usually just fail to provide enough voltage for the system to start POST. They're designed not to turn the system on if the power flow is not constant. Depending on the quality of the PSU that you're using, that tollerance may be less or more. Low Quality PSUs will let some dirty power through, which can damage components, or may just fry and do nothing.

 

[DanTMWTMP]

i can also probably be that your ps/2 port died on you, and anything connected to your ps/2 port is restricting the computer to boot. But, usually, right b4 the windows boot screen pops up, it'll give you an error message.

But still it's worth a shot. unplug any ps/2 devices and replace it w/ a usb version. See if this works.


But from the looks of it...it's most likely the PSU because it turned off by itself at night, and will not turn on again.

 

[hixen]

thx for the post dWhisper, i will go today to se if I can find a new psu for my system, and see if I can revive it now. Thx all others, for helping also. I check back later to se If i got it to work again.