My devices are no responding one by one!

[brentkiosk]

Same monitor with no signal on both computers? If so, might be a problem with the cable to the monitor, or with the connector.

 

[stuh505]

ok well, i unplugged the DVD drive, CDRW drive, removed the sound card and the ram memory. still no screen, but i get 3 beeps.

http://www.pantherproducts.co.uk/Articles/Motherboard/BIOSbeep.shtml

i looked up the 3 beeps, it means memory problem...makes sense. so i put the memory card in, try it again, no beeps but still no luck.

so it seems that it must be a) motherboard b) video card

 

[brentkiosk]

Originally posted by: stuh505
more bad news:



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..

Mnemeth has a good point. Since something is not working, get all the nonessential somethings disconnected. Pull the sound card (the original problem may be there), disconnect the hard drive, CD,DVD, Floppy. Disconnect by removing the wide ribbon cables. I would also disconnect the power. Leave ons stick of DDR ram in and the video card. Then try and see if anything appears on the monitor.

 

[stuh505]

brent,

plugged the monitor into my friends computer and it worked fine.

it doesn't surprise me that my old computer is messed up too...its been sitting around for 5 years and it sucked when i stopped using it.

 

[brentkiosk]

Can you connect your monitor to your friend's Dell to rule out the monitor cable?

 

[brentkiosk]

We seem to be posting at the same time.

So monitor is OK. What about your AGP video card in your old computer? Or are you unsure enough about the old one that nothing would be proved?

 

[stuh505]

Originally posted by: 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.

brent, according to this bios beep codes table, it says 1 beep is a signal of a refresh failure, not normal operation?

 

[stuh505]

well, like i said, when i plug my old computer in it does the same thing as my current one...."check signal" on the monitor and black screen but fans/leds etc running fine.

so i tried swapping the old video card into my new comp, nothing changed. but sincei dont know whats wrong with my old comp that doesnt solve anything.


i cannot try putting my good video card in my old computer because the old one doesn't even have an AGP port...

 

[brentkiosk]

About the beep codes. I always get a beep on this computer, and on the one at work and on the other computers in the house, a few seconds after I turn them on. It happens before the monitor is warmed up, so I never paid attention to any other messages. But, beyond that, I have not had to learn anything about beep codes. So disregard what I said - someone who knows more about that can probably help. Anyway, I don't think it's going to help with your problem.

So, it seems like you are down to Motherboard or CPU, video board, or less likely PSU. I don't know any way for further troubleshooting without swapping in new ones one at a time. You said cash flow was an issue. Too bad - this is a great excuse for an upgrade . . .

 

[stuh505]

hehehe...i like upgrades. what's the best video card nowadays?
hopefully tommorrow or later next week I will be able to take it down to the EM computer lab and try some more swapping. good thing I have connections

 

[brentkiosk]

Somebody else will have to answer the video card and other upgrade questions. I spend a lot of time lurking on these forums to try to get some insight, and , since I don't use the computer for games, the video card question is one I am in the dark about. I got all the info for the past 3 or 4 builds (me, wife, kids) by following other threads here and by posting a few questions when I couldn't already find it. Then I just set a price limit for video cards (was $50) and ended up with what I ended up with. For that price you cannot get a good gaming card as far as I can tell.

A few swaps should tell you if its on the MB or not. That would give a lot of direction to whether to repair or to upgrade!!

 

[stuh505]

....

I'm back online b****es!

Turns out my memory card had become seated improperly. This is unbelievable to me, esp because I don't think I even touched the memory card until after the problem occured, and since then, I had tried reseatting it 3 or 4 times!

Well, it's still not detecting my sound card. I've tried switching ports and that didn't help. So I'm just going to have to replace that sucker. Thanks for all the help guys.

 

[stuh505]

Haha, well...I have finally solved my last problem...figured I might as well post it here for completeness -- never know, someoen else might have the same problem.

So how did my sound card stop responding without any reason? Turns out that the close proximity of my Logitech X560 subwoofer vibrated my case so much as to make the wire connecting the sound card to the DVD drive fall out. I had previously had no idea that there needed to be a wire connecting these parts.

 

[amdskip]

Originally posted by: stuh505
Haha, well...I have finally solved my last problem...figured I might as well post it here for completeness -- never know, someoen else might have the same problem.

So how did my sound card stop responding without any reason? Turns out that the close proximity of my Logitech X560 subwoofer vibrated my case so much as to make the wire connecting the sound card to the DVD drive fall out. I had previously had no idea that there needed to be a wire connecting these parts.

Thats not good at all. You should not have a sub so close to your computer. I would recommend moving it.