My devices are no responding one by one!

[stuh505]

I built my own computer with the help of a friend a couple years ago. Here is the problem: I come back to my computer, and it won't play sound. It says it cannot detect the hardware or there is no hardware for it. So I re-download the drivers (fortissimo II), install them, no effect. I open up my box, wiggle/make sure all the wires are secure, remove the hercules sound card and put it back in. When I turn the computer back on, the monitor says "check signal" and then goes black! So it seems like something has cuased first my sound card and now my video card (geforce 4) to become not detected. any advice?

 

[Harvey]

Do you have a surge protector on your power line and your modem? A lightning strike miles away could cause a spike that could take down a something on your motherboard and/or any of your peripherals.

Check your CMOS to see if it's been altered. Even if it looks OK, try setting it to the default, then resetting it to your preferences. If that doesn't work, try using the jumper to clear it.

What does Device Manager report about your peripherals? See if it can find your current drivers for anything it reports missing.

Boot to Safe Mode, and see if your peripherals are found that way.

Hope that helps. Good luck.

 

[brentkiosk]

Well, since it's unlikely both the sound and video cards decided to die at the same time, it's gotta be something else. A bad power supply could be the problem. Best check is to try another supply if you have one. Could also be the motherboard.

Do fans spin, LED's light, beeps beep in the normal way when you first turn it on?

To troubleshoot, get down to the minimum system. Disconnect drives, remove sound card and see if you can get it to post and put something on the monitor. If it were mine, I would try to borrow a power supply to try

 

[stuh505]

1 - there was no power surge or anything like that. when i came back to my computer, it had obviously not been turned off or anything. also my friend was in the room the whole time, and nothing happened to his comp. i dont have a modem, its connected to T1 im at college.

2 - you don't seem to understand my problem. no signal is being sent to the monitor. so i cannot boot the computer or do anyting without a monitor. the monitor itself is fine.

so whatever i do, its got to be something inside the box. its a hardware issue. the thing is i dont know which wires to check and what not. i tried removing and reinstering the graphics card to no avail as well.

 

[stuh505]

the power supply is working fine. i have the monitor and many other things plugged into the same surge protecotr, they all come on fine...when i turn on the computer, the fans and lights start fine.

also, i did not lose video and sound at the same time.

sound went randomly. then i opened up the box, wiggled some wires, decided i didnt know what i was doing, so i turned it back on...THEN i have no signal to monitor.

i have since removed/reinstalled the video card, and tried making sure all the wires are in place.

there are a few wires which were not plugged into anything, that might have been accidentally pulled out of place. these were some plugs that had 4 female holes in them that are capable of plugging into a series of pins on the lower right side of my mother board. one of them has the word "sound" on it. they all have a little triangle on one side to show orientation. i wasnt sure if these were supposed to be plugged in so i tried it...but nothing changed. but there are a few combinations in which they could be plugged in so im not sure.

 

[brentkiosk]

hmmm . . .

So you think something got bumped when you were fooling with the sound card. That's believable. Even though you did reseat the video card, I would suggest trying that agian. I had one that I didn't get seated correctly for several days (because I convinced myself it was a faulty card). It was a new build - i got it going with an old PCI card and finally tried again to get the AGP card in right. But it took SEVERAL tries.

I doubt that the other cables/connectors have much to do with your video problem.

In cidentally, spinning fans, etc isn't a gaurantee that the psu is OK. But I agree that you probably bumped something, and the video card is the leading candidate.

You weren't moving things with the power on were you?

 

[stuh505]

ok, those wires that were unplugged which i thought i might have bumped are unrelated. i have been staring at my motherboard for a long time and figured out that it was the "front panel header" and using that i made sure to get all the little plugs oriented in the right spots, but it seems to be for lights etc only and not really related to this.

i also tried removing the bios plug because the chart said that was "confgiure" mode for bias and i thought that could do soemthign, but it didnt help either.

i am pretty sure i didnt bump anything important now. im going to try reseating the video/sound cards again I guess...but its hard to imagine that they would be seated wrong, i mean the contacts are all in there, but ill try it.

 

[stuh505]

Harvey said: Check your CMOS to see if it's been altered. Even if it looks OK, try setting it to the default, then resetting it to your preferences. If that doesn't work, try using the jumper to clear it.

im not sure where the CMOS is on my motherboard or how i would know if it's been altered. if you mean the BIOS CONFIG thing which has 3 male leads, I did try removing the jumper (recovery mode) and restarting it. nothing changed so i put the jump back in 1-2 (default mode).

brentkiosk said: In cidentally, spinning fans, etc isn't a gaurantee that the psu is OK

ok, by PSU, you mean power supply unit...aka the big box that transforms the 115 Vpp AC source to DC source I assume?

if that's not how I tell if it's ok, what is the correct way? I can also tell you that the little standby LED on the motherboard is on.

I tried reseating the video card, sound card, and DDR memory card a few more times...

 

[stuh505]

how easy is it to destroy the motherboard, sound card, or video card from static electricity? there were never any static shocks when I touched anything, but maybe there was a static shock too small for me to notice. I cant think of anything else. I mean how can taking off the cover and reseating the sound card result in no signal being sent to the monitor..

 

[stuh505]

I just did a little searching and read this:

The amount of voltage involved in static electricity sounds impressive. Walk across that rug and touch a grounded metal object, and the voltage can be in the 10,000-to-12,000-volt range...static shock must be 3500 to 4000 volts before you can feel it...integrated circuits can be damaged or destroyed by static voltages as low as 400 volts.

so far, this is the ONLY potential cause of my problem that I can think of. hopefully, someone can think of some other potential causes...because I have NO MONEY and I can't afford to replace anything...

I know that I can't check integrated circuits, but it seems that in order for the cards to not be detected, more than integrated circuits would have to be destroyed...so is there any way I could diagnos these with a digital multimeter?

 

[PCTweaker5]

Did you just open the case and start grabbing hardware or did you touch the metal frame and then start grabbing? I work on carpet everytime I mess with my computer so I always make sure to grab the case for a second or two, or if I only need one hand then Ill keep a hand on the case and use the other to tweak. Ive never messed anything up with static so I couldnt tell you what the threshold unless it doesnt matter the amount of static to destroy. Good luck and I hope it works out for you, maybe your friend did it. Lol

 

[stuh505]

Well I've been using it for 2 years and I haven't opened the case in about a year prior to this, so I don't know what suddenly caused the sound card problem. But yeah, when I opened it up, I did not think to ground myself by touching the case. But I also do not work on carpet at least.

I also have an aluminum case which is way more conductive than a regular steel case (i think steel is the regular at least). I'm not exaclty sure if this increases or decreases the chances of static shock.

 

[brentkiosk]

The CMOS is where settings are stored. When you first boot up, there is usually an option to press delete or one of the function keys to change the settings. That's what's in the CMOS. A battery keeps the settings when you turn the computer off. You can reset the CMOS to default values. Depending on the Motherboard, there might be a jumper you move. This is done with the power off (many recommend unplugging the power completely) and you leave the jumper in the reset position for "a while" as at least a few minutes. Then the jumper is moved back and you try to re-boot. If there is no jumper, you can accomplish the same thing by removing the battery for a while with the power off, then replacing it. Resetting the CMOS often cures problems, and you should give it a try.

It's true that you can fatally zap things with static electricity, especially in dry weather. If that happened, there's not much you can do to tell with a multimeter.

When you turn the computer on, does it seem to beep about when it did before you started having problems? The beep would come from the case speaker, so bad sound problems don't affect it. If you beep or beeps seem normal, that's a good sign.

Yes, the power supply is the metal box with the wires. A lot of problems are caused if voltages drift more than 5% or so off specs. But, lights and fans are not as sensitive to wrong voltages, so still work. The best check is to try another supply. But, clear the CMOS first, then see if it's beeping normally. If so, the motherboard is probably OK.

I'm sort of running out of ideas here. Maybe someone else has some insight.

 

[stuh505]

MY PSU is a Turbolink CWT - 420watt ATX. That is pretty high end I think based on the wattage.

However, I do notice that my fan spees vary in RPM and then settle down after about 30 seconds when I turn the computer on. I had read that this is a possible sign of the PSU not having high enough watts...and that 350+ watts should be required when using video/sound cards etc. Well, I have a 420watt supply! It seems like this ought to be plenty...

If the lithium coin battery is storing ALTERATIONS to the CMOS, then it seems like resetting to the default CMOS would not be a good idea because I know it's been working on the current settings.

So brent....what if it the internal speaker DOESNT beep at all? I honestly can't recall if it ever used to beep on a normal startup (since I rarely turn off or restart my computer)...but it definitely does not beep at all when I turn it on now. Is that a bad sign?

 

[stuh505]

can damaging the integrated circuit from static shock really result in the devices not sending any signal out?

 

[brentkiosk]

About the beeps - all the computers I'm used to using beep a few seconds after being turned on and then again as it says it is starting windows. However, there may be systems that don't do that. When I was fighting my no video problem, the fact that it beeped in a sort of a normal way gave me some confidence that the problem was a video one, not a dead system one. So no beeps sounds like a bad sign to me.

Don't worry about changing CMOS settings to default. It will be easy to reset them to what you want. If they got changed, that could be the source of your troubles. They probably are OK, but it's an easy thing to do and has been know to cure a lot of problems.

One of the things I've learned by reading these forums is that there are strong opinions on power supplies. Manufacturers can give a high max power output, but some of the voltages can be off spec at that level. Since yours has been working for a couple of years, the basic specs must be OK for your system. However, SOMETHING is now wrong, and that could be it. I have had it happen - after over 3 trouble free years, one of the voltage rails on a PSU stopped delivering the necessary power, and the computer didn't boot. The disk spun, fans spun but nothing else happened. So that is a possibility. Otherwise it would seem to have to be the video card or the motherboard or CPU. You CAN test psu voltages with a multimeter. I can't remember if the side of the supply tells the wire colors, but you're looking for +12, +5, +3.3, -5 and -12. There are a bunch of ground wires (all black, I think).

Good luck with all this.

 

[Harvey]

Originally posted by: stuh505
can damaging the integrated circuit from static shock really result in the devices not sending any signal out?

Absolutely! I try to avoid going into my machine on a dry, windy day. If you forget to discharge the static buildup, one touch to the wrong place on your motherboard can turn it into a DED (Dark Emitting Device) and even kill every card plugged into it.

No joke about that, friend. Try another vid card, and just try to boot to a bootable floppy. If that doesn't work, you're probably in for some new hardware.

 

[stuh505]

ok, reset the CMOS...nothin.

tested the power supply. hard to measure all the different outputs because i didn't want to strip any of the wires near the source, but tracing the wires back, i measured it in a few places...i was getting readings like 12.10, 12.17, 5.10. So, how much play is OK? Are these within acceptable limits?

Tommorrow I will be testing video/sound cards from another system.

 

[brentkiosk]

Yep - those voltages are OK. Usual tolerence is 5% either way.

 

[stuh505]

Harvey,

Do you think using an aluminum case is a bad idea because it is so conductive? I'm worried that might increase the chances of static shock.

Also, does touching the case as a ground work only when the PSU is plugged in?

 

[brentkiosk]

Aluminum case is a good choice. In fact from a grounding point of view, the more conductive the better.

The case is a large enough piece of metal that it acts as a ground for static amounts of charge whether or not the psu is plugged in. The good practice rule (if you don't have a static wrist strap - i don't) is to always touch the case before and as you touch things inside. And, certain kinds of clothing build up static more than others.

 

[Harvey]

Originally posted by: stuh505
Harvey,

Do you think using an aluminum case is a bad idea because it is so conductive? I'm worried that might increase the chances of static shock.

Also, does touching the case as a ground work only when the PSU is plugged in?

An aluminum case is nice. It won't give you any more protection from magnetic interfere, but it will give you a good conductive electrical path to ground.

The answer to your second question is, yes. Unless you have another wire from the case to some ground point, such as your plumbing, the usual return path to ground is through the third (ground) wire in your AC cord. If you live in an older building, you also have to make sure they connected the ground lug in the wall plug. In many retrofits, installers do not want to incur the expense of rewiring the building with the third wire.

 

[stuh505]

i am editing this message out of existance.

 

[Mnementh]

OK, you were asked to do something in the second reply to this thread and it doesn't appear if you have done that, you need to get your system down to barebones to start troubleshooting.

This means Motherboard, CPU, Videocard and Memory NOTHING else (except power of course )

If you still have no video then you need to try a different video card, then a different power supply.

Once you have done this if you still have no joy then we can get down to some more in depth troubleshooting but you MUST do this first. Any of the items in your PC can cause you to have no video display on POST so you have to eliminate them one by one, there's no quick and easy way of doing it I'm afraid

Mnementh

 

[stuh505]

more bad news:

i got my old computer up here to try swapping parts, but before I get the chance to start doing that, I turn it on and discover it has the same problem...no signal to monitor. i tried swapping the video card anyway (and old voodoo 3 that's not even AGP) but nothing changed. this doesn't help me rule anything out unfortunately.

i was going to borrow a friend's videocard and try swapping that to see if the problem was fixed. it's one of those new dell PC's that's pretty compact...I found 2 buttons on the side, the case splits apart a bit hwen I press them in but I couldn't figure out how to get the case all the way off. From the looks ofthe back end I'm not sure the video card would fit anyway.

Mnemeth, I hear what you are saying...I think id rather try swapping the video card first thing because I think that has a higher probability of being the problem AND it's really easy for me to swap...I'm less confident messing aroun with everything else because I don't have much experience putting hardware together.

when you say leave the memory in, do you mean my DDR ram chip or my hard drive? I'm not sure what else I could remove...DVD, CDRW are really the only things in there and I doubt they are causing the problem..