Okay, I got a co-workers pc at my house trying to fix. Here is the problem. Turn on the power, all the fans go on, but thats it. Nothing at all on the monitor, no BIOS screen, floppy, HD, and CD/DVD drives also do nothing, no green lights, no floppy noise, no HD noise (that I can hear). CD doors won't open either when pushing the open buttons. I put the mutli-meter to two of the power plugs and got 5V from both, so the PS is putting out voltage. He said that the computer was fine when he shut it down the other night, then when he went to put it on next day, this is what happend. I thought maybe the BIOS chipped went kaput. If that happens, would that stop even the drives from doing their initial boot up stuff, i.e. floppy light goes on and makes a noise, etc. I'm pretty sure I can replace the BIOS chip if I need to. Here is some system info. ECS board: K7S5A V3.1 AMIBIOS BIOS chip A dead battery (the button one on the board) wouldn't cause this, would it?
There should be a "beep" or series of "beeps" upon startup. That should give you some information as they are codes that can be deciphered through the motherboard manufactures manual or website. Steve
The battery keeps the date and time and system configuration. I had a machine with your symptoms once and it turned out to be a short in the floppy drive (I found out after I replaced the power supply :ball: ). Try unhooking the monitor, floppy, hard drive, CD, etc. and power it on and see if it beeps. You can also try reseating the memory. If you have any cards that plug into the motherboard (ethernet, sound, modem, etc.) try reseating or removing them. Make sure you're grounded before you touch any circuit boards. If you disconnect everything and it's still dead you may have a fried motherboard. Good luck, baking
You should have 5 volts on the red wire and 12 volts on the yellow wire. Sounds like the power supply died. I have had PC's do that to me...shut em off at night and they die the next day .....probably a spike in the night time or something or a weak component that went south. Mike
I'm not an expert, but it sounds to me as if the hard drive isn't spinning, and if the hard drive doesn't start spinning, the computer can't boot normally. See if it will boot from a bootable floppy. If it can, try GENTLY tapping the hard drive, of course with power going to the drive. If you can get it to spin, back up the data IMMEDIATELY and get a new hard drive. John
Well, had no beeps at all. So I just tried unplugging various combos of ide and floppy cables and I did get some beeps by doing that. Next step is to use some spare cables I have and see what happens. Also checked yellow wire and I do have 12V there as well as the 5V on the red.
If the vid card is a geforce try reseating it. Ive built a few poots with that same board and for some jacked up reason sometimes I'd have to reseat the vid card over and over to get them to boot. After that they would always be fine. Hairs and dust that are present when the vid card is intalled can eventually cause a failed connection as well so check for those things with a flashlight. Maybe even daub some rubbing alcohol on the contacts. Also as mentioned check the memory. Replace with a known good stick if reseating the card doesnt work. Also check for dust and hairs. Also do all testing with a bare minimum of parts. Just vid card is best and with that board thats all i ever even run in there since it has built in sound and lan. Short of a motherboard failure I have a feeling its going to end up being either video or memory related since both of those items either failing or being unseated will cause those exact symptoms. My credentials: 3 years of phone based end user support for Presarios, Pavillions and then AST computers. Feel free to pm me or give me a call if you need any more help.
I think I found the problem It looks like his CDRW is the culprit. When it is disconnected, IDE cable, the computer booted into Windows. Its looks to be an older unit, Acer 8x4x32, caddy style (seperate cartridge for the cd). Going to try a couple more things like making it the master and see if it changes. Otherwise, it looks like problem solved I think. Maybe I am cut out for this line of work.
