Desktop Problem

Skoal

New Member
A friend of mine is having problems with his emachine (told him not to buy it) which is out of warranty. Randomly when you turn on the computer the monitor doesn't turn on. Sometimes you can power cycle it just once and the monitor will turn on, other times you may have to power cycle it a few times before the monitor will turn on. When it comes up as it should it works perfectly. It happens with a known good monitor. I disabled the onboard video and installed a spare video card and still had the problem. Also, when you press F2 to enter setup, make a change, then press F10 to save and exit, it locks up still on the BIOS screen and doesn't reboot like it should. I installed the latest BIOS which didn't help. I also removed/replaced the CMOS battery which didn't help. I'm thinking that the motherboard is going out, but I did read about similar issues that could be caused by a faulty power supply. I plan to do some more troubleshooting tomorrow. I also want to try removing a pci modem in the computer as I've had a modem prevent a computer from boot after a lightning strike. Anyone here run into similar problems? Suggestions?
 
Well, you're already ahead of the game a bit since you did a lot of the standard troubleshooting already it seems - kudos:) How old is the actual system and what are the conditions it's run in (24*7, light use/heavy use, room temp, etc.)? --anything at all would be helpful, no matter how insignificant it might seem.

Typically, if a MoBo is on it's way out, there would be more wide-spread issues, but it could be in the beginning stages, so that's still a possibility at this point. You're correct about it being a PSU issue; they can be very random and cause odd problems. If you have a spare PSU, that would be my next area to look at. Do you have a spare you can swap it out with?
 
The computer is just over a year old and just went out of warranty. It is used as a home computer basically just to surf the web and check email.

I did a bit more troubleshooting and it seems that the problems is the motherboard.
 
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