Broken Computer

Gorelab

My computer is broken, and I have no idea what could be the matter with it. It was working fine when I turned it off when I went to work, however; when I returned, it woudln't go at all. It turns on and everything powers up and the harddrives spin, but the BIOS doesn't boot, it doesn't make error beeps, or thebeep that it makes when it starts up rightly, and it gets no video signal even though the video card is firmly in place. Any ideas? Thanks.

korbento

I would recommend putting a cd in the cd tray. Most bioses will automatically try to read the cd and check if it is a live cd that it can boot from. So, if you put a cd in and it starts booting, it proves that your bios works and that you have a problem with your video card.

Enos316

This is one of the worst problems for a PC, because it takes so long to troubleshoot sometimes.

The beep is the POST noise (power on self test). If you aren't hearing that or seeing anything on the screen you have some kind of hardware problem. I would start by reseating your RAM, sometimes that can cause weird problems.

Otherwise, check the mobo and make sure there aren't any wires making contact where they shouldn't be. If you still aren't getting anything, try unplugging all the components (RAM, hard drives, cd-roms, etc) and see if you cant get the PC to display something. If you get a message saying "No operating system" or "no system memory", then at least you know the video card works and you can begin to re-add components one-by-one to find out which is the problem.

Gorelab

The no beeping is what gets me, the last time I broke it I actually jostled it, and it at least did the error beeps rather than the "Everything's okay" beep. But now it does nothing whcih has me slightly worried.