Posted on 11/01/2009 3:15:47 PM PST by GregB
I have a computer that will not turn on.
Start with just the motherboard and then and the other one at a time. It is possible it could be something like a cd drive.
From personal experience.
I tend to snack at the computer and have a long haired cat. The main “on” button had so much smudge that it stuck in the “in” position so that the computer would come on and then immediately turn off again. The people at Best Buy only charged me $20 bucks to clean it when they could have really raped me!
If the worst happens, it is probably your motherboard. You then can take your old hard drive and stick it in a “conversion kit”. Your files (and programs!) can be accessed through another computer via a USB connection.
$20...Hmmmmmm ok
Next time call me, I'll only charge you $15 and we can discuss sex afterwards........
Before you start tearing things apart, try one more thing.
Does your power supply have an on/off switch? If so turn it off, then hit and hold the power button on your pc. then turn the power supply back on and try to boot. If PSU doesn’t have a switch, just unplug the machine and do the same thing. This worked for me once.
Some PSUs also have a switch for 120v and 240v. Make sure that didn’t get switched somehow.
When you press the on/off button for 5 seconds most machines turn off. Can you tell me what kind of machine you have. Perhaps you have a soft switch problem.
If the worst happens, it is probably your motherboard. You then can take your old hard drive and stick it in a “conversion kit”. Your files (and programs!) can be accessed through another computer via a USB connection.
If it just keeps beeping it may be the battery is not charging properly. So you have perpetual low battery signal. And if thats screwed up then maybe the 120V isn’t getting anywhere else.
Sounds like power problems - power supply or wiring of the plug in. Could be on off switch - but then the beeping shouldn’t be going on.
Test to make sure you have 120 coming out of wall
also! Good Luck...
If it doesn't start botting, press the off/on switch and see if it feels sticky. If it does use your calibrated right hand to wack it with the proper force and see if your machine doesn't stay on.
Good luck.
Does the CPU fan start spinning when you turn the computer on or not? That is the main fan on the motherboard. If you push the computer's power switch and you see lights come on, and you hear the hard drive start to spin up, but you see that the CPU fan does not move, then the fan-off control will quickly shut the computer down to prevent the CPU from overheating. If the fan is the problem, then the solution is not to buy another motherboard or power supply, it is to clean, fix, or replace the fan.
Turning on for a short few sec.s then turning off is symptomatic of the CPU and/or board's auto-shutdown circuitry kicking in saving your system from frying. Some typical causes:
-clocking speeds too high on the board and/or CPU. If you haven't OC-d your system consider then
-a bad CPU fan (high temp auto shutdown)
-CPU grounding out on a piece of metal underneath the motherboard -pop the case and look for the bottom of the board, CPU socket contacting metal.
-a poorly-seated CPU.
Don't worry about not getting beeps. Beeps = $$. The auto shutdowns are usually recoverable with minimal effort.
Do you see the BIOS on the screen when it comes on? Is the screen black? Can you put your hand behind the computer where the power supply fan is to see if it is coming on? Did you take the side off of the tower and see if the CPU fan is coming on when you push the start button? Just some things to check.
I had this happen a long time ago. IIRC, there was something in the computer that was shorted and the power supply was detecting the short and shutting itself down as it was designed to do. No beep code.
OK, now that I’m remembering, I had just reinstalled a hard drive. One of the mounting screws I used was too long and was grounding the HDD’s PC board. Changing to a shorter screw fixed the problem. I’d suggest disconnecting the power leads on everything and seeing if the problem goes away. If it does, then reconnect one item at a time until the problem recurs.
First, take all the extra boards out of the mother board except of course if you are using an add on video card. If you have 2 sticks of memory, take one out and leave the other. If you only have one, if it's bad, you should get a series of beeps from the MB to tell you what is wrong. If you have no substitute parts, it could be tougher and take longer to figure things out. If you get no beeps when you boot up, that signals the MB is ok and you could have had a bad add on board and taking them out should allow you to boot up. Adding 1 board at a time till it fails to boot will tell you what board it is. If you have no add on boards, you will need to get to the Bios setup and disable each MB option you don't need to boot, such as sound, ethernet jack, and even the video if you have a substitute card. If you discover your ethernet jack is causing the problem, get a replacement ethernet card and leave the Bios ethernet off. If the MB boots after cutting off as much as possible, swap memory stick one with memory stick 2 and you should fail to boot if that is the problem.
Another thing to do is check your 5v supply and the 12v supply on a plug end connector with a digital voltmeter. They can only vary a small amount and still keep your machine stable. Measuring the 3v supply and the Vcore is tougher if you can't get it to stay on but a few seconds.
Still having trouble, it can be a defective hard drive. I still have an old 10 gig hard drive that will get to the blue screen in Windows and then it dies and reboots again. It dies in the same spot each time. I re installed Windows thinking it was a software glitch, but that didn't fix it. It also dies when trying to install linux. Just having the drive plugged in as a slave kills the machine. also you might try an old boot floppy from Win 98 to see if you can even get that far. The idea is to get rid of anything and all things you don't need to see if the MB is the problem. Don't even leave anything in a usb slot( printer, etc).
If you can boot in safe mode, you probably have a software problem. All if this assumes you have deducing skilz. If not, call someone and offer beer. You may not get it fixed, but you will feel better about it.
LOL
Is it an ACER? Notorious for power on problems. If so, need to go online and get new bios load.
It was built locally for my cousin who I bought it from. No brand name.
It was built locally for my cousin who I bought it from. No brand name.
It was built locally for my cousin who I bought it from. No brand name.
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