My gaming computer seems to have kicked the bucket for the time being. I turned on my computer earlier yesterday and noticed that it wasn't passing the POST, no video or even beeps from the case. I did some fiddling with the vga-to-dvi adapter, thinking it a loose cable, and tried it again. Computer booted up, booted up SWAT, went ingame and then the video cut, left with a blank screen.
And that's it. Now whenever I boot the PC, the fans just whir, no POST beeps or anything.
I'm considering it may be that the CPU burned out, as I noticed that the CPU heatsink fan wasn't spinning when I opened it up and switched it on the first time... Though I checked to make sure there wasn't anything obstructing it, and now it seems to spin up every time.
I can't rule out the possibility that it's a bad graphics card, but the lack of beeps from the case might mean either the CPU or the motherboard is broken.
Either way, I'm gonna rip out most of everything from the case, starting with the graphics card to see if I can get any response from it!
SAS_Master - Regimental Sergeant Major
GCHQ
"He's trusting you to do your job which is to clear that corner! Nothing else!"
I'm sorry to hear about that, Masterson
Try some tech forums for better detail on your issue, it may be that power supply is doing damage, or in some cases accumulated dust overheat things.
Either way, hope you resolve this and hop back in here and on servers.
If I can be of help PM me and I'll see what I can do for you.
Speed, Precision, Experience, Endurance. General System Tweak Guide
Damn hardware - I feel with you, Masterson.
Maybe the one or other technician here can give some advice...
Good luck
DUKE, Germany
"What's the plan?
Track'em, find'em, kill'em!"
if it has onboard gfx, take your gfx card out and try booting it with onboard gfx.
Lt_Col WIZ, VC, MiD (Ret)
Sorry to hear that. My notebook just broke down aswell...
Or the internal speaker xD
Ok, serious: good conclusion, but add the RAM as possible source of the failure aswell
Good idea. Depending on your bios almost every device except the power supply could make the POST stuck (yes, in theory CPU, motherboard and RAM are enough to give a beep-error-code for every other device. But from my experience you shouldn't rely 100% on that...).
Btw: if the CPU fan is not working correctly you should fix it ofc, but usually the CPU is protected pretty good against overheating. It should lower the performance (and therefore heat production) first and then turn off automatically to prevent damage.
Another detail: I know that my BIOS has a (really annoying) beep sequence for CPU fan failure (forgot the cable once after a hardware change...).
Thanks for the replies guys!
Let's see what I've done so far:
Checked the RAM in another PC: No dice, wasn't recognised in bios, only displayed 1014MB, rather than 2096MB or so.
Removed RAM: No changes. Fans spun only.
Remove RAM again: BEEPBEEP BEEP BEEP BEEPBEEP BEEP BEEP BEEPBEEP BEEP BEEP.
Progress!
Put RAM back in and removed graphics card: No changes. Fans spun only.
Removed RAM: No changes. Fan spun only.
Put graphics card back in: CPU and case fan spins. Graphics card fan doesn't spin.
Oh great, looks like I shorted the graphics card. :L Just my luck! :C
In all honesty, at this point I'm gonna probably salvage what I can from it (HDD and PSU. PSU is only 2 years old after having to replace it.), dump the PC and buy a new one. It's 6 years old anyway.
SAS_Master - Regimental Sergeant Major
GCHQ
"He's trusting you to do your job which is to clear that corner! Nothing else!"
That info is sort of useful, Masterson.
I'm no hardware expert, but from some personal experience I can say that your whole PC may have faced a huge discharge when you or other charged metal object touched casings and that in return may have burned some of the hardware.
RAM being detected less than it should be may signal some dust accumulated on the chip, or part of the chip burned off.
If graphic card is not responding at all, it's probably dead, but that is not for sure.
It is most likely that your motherboard circuits are damaged or maybe bits here and there.
Either way, in order not to cause further damage, either go to a trusted service or get the testing equipment to test things out.
Speed, Precision, Experience, Endurance. General System Tweak Guide
You guys have horror scenarios in mind...
Actually computer hardware is not as breakable as many people think. Ofc don't play rugby with it, and don't bath it. Remember to cut off the power supply when changing/removing hardware. Then everything should be fine.
Masterson, you results look kinda confusing: with removed RAM you got once a beep sequence and other times just no reaction as before? (btw: did you checked the meaning of the beep code? I guess RAM failure, but a second look won't hurt.) In case you have more than one RAM module: tried to start with just one of them?
Did you pluged off all storage devices (HDD and BlueRay/DVD/CD/Floppy devices + ALL USB stuff)?
About the graphics card fan: they usually need an extra power supply, so did you plugin all cables to the card again? And the right cables in the right direction etc.?
A trusted service is often pretty expensive and they also need to buy new hardware incase something is broken.
That is the very weirdest thing about it all, Raptor, only got the beep error code for RAM failure once when the RAM was removed. Every other time I removed both sticks of RAM, the fans just spun and no beeping was heard (even tried one module, then the other).
Re the graphics card, it's low-mid range card from 2005/6, like a 7600, or at least of the 7xxx series, I'd have to check though. The fan didn't have any connections going to/from it, it's entirely bus-powered, I believe.
Cheers for the help guys.
SAS_Master - Regimental Sergeant Major
GCHQ
"He's trusting you to do your job which is to clear that corner! Nothing else!"
You are welcome, I like such riddles
Anyway the fact that there is no Beep with removed graphics card or removed RAM indicates another (mb additional) error source. If just the graphics card would be broken, the BIOS should make noise with removed graphics card. Same argument for the RAM.
At this point, I'm going to hand it in to get someone else to look at it at the weekend. If it's a problem with the mobo itself, then I'm up the creek without a paddle, having neither the tools nor skills to solder stuff!
Rather late EDIT for my previous post: The card manufacturer is Nvidia, dunno if ATI ever made cards with 7xxx model numbering.
SAS_Master - Regimental Sergeant Major
GCHQ
"He's trusting you to do your job which is to clear that corner! Nothing else!"