I turn it on, the fans and lights go on, then nothing!

Z

Zargot

New Member
so i'm having a rather confusing problem with my computer.

so, once a year i screw my computer apart, take all the bits and pieces out and lay them out and blow off all the dust, clean them a bit etc. ive been doing this for like 5 years, never had any problems.

anyways, i did it yesterday. before i screwed it together, it worked. not perfectly, it was rather slow and had frequent blue screens, which is the main reason i did it. (dust removal has fixed similar problems in the past)

so i did what i allways do. first clean my room so my computer wont get dirty inside, then screw it up, put all the pieces on my bed and systematically lean out of my window and blow all the dust of, and dusting them off after.

after i screwed my computer together, it wont start. that is, it starts, but.. well, its hard to explain.

i press the on button. the fancy blue light i have inside my cabinet turns on, all my zillion fans turn on, the fan on my video card turns on, and it starts making that wonderful "look at me, i'm a jet plane about to take off" sound.

but thats it. my USB keyboard / mouse doesnt get power, and my computer screen just stays black. when i turn it off and on, it blinks "checking digital signal, no signal, checking analog signal, no signal" a few times then goes black.

i didnt think much of it at the time, but i used a magnetic screwdriver for the tiny screwes. at one point, it touched my main circuit board (i think thats the name, the huge card thing that i plug my processor, RAM, video and sound cards etc into). specifically, it touched a little shiny doomahajicky close to where i plug my video card in.

i have tried plugging both my keyboard, my mouse, my minotor and my speaker system into my laptop, they all work fine, so its not a problem there.

does this problem sound familiar? anyone know whats going on? i miss my computer :( (by the way, i'm writing this from my laptop. :P)

yours truly, Vegard Østhagen
 
Disconnect everything inside(basically besides the PSU, mobo, and CPU) and outside and see if it'll do ANYTHING. You should get a no RAM beep. If that works, put the parts back in one by one(probably starting with RAM ;) ) But sure that all contacts are clean and it's not just dust that's in the way.
 
ok thanks, i'll try it in a bit and report back :)

update: i disconnected everything, and on startup i got a little *beep* well it was kinda low, like a *buup* but i think that qualifies. now moving to putting everything back in, nice and clean :)
 
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its not working. still no signal on my monitor. i took out everything, cleaned and blew the cards and all sockets. :(

also, keeping the on/off button pressed in doesnt turn the computer off. been holding it in for 30 seconds without any responce
 
Something similiar happened to me.
After disconnecting everything but the mobo and cpu like 10 times.
Nothing changed.
So I untightend the cpu and it worked fine.

I had to leave it with the lever half way.
If I tighten the cpu lever all the way, my computer wont' start at all.
 
It's possibly a short, are the case standoffs only touching the holes on the motherboard? Anywhere else and there'll be a short.
 
A case standoff is a small 'lump' a few millimetres tall. It keeps the motherboard away from the case to stop a high ampage short circuit.
 
GCR said:
A case standoff is a small 'lump' a few millimetres tall. It keeps the motherboard away from the case to stop a high ampage short circuit.
Click to expand...

as far as i can tell, the case standoffs are exactley where they should be. :/
 
no, my mobo (thanks to google image search i now know that mobo = mother board. live and learn) anyways, i was told to leave my mobo, my cpu and my psu in, and so i did.
 
i dont know if bumping is illegal on these forums, but this is a problem i would like to see fixed. so with good faith that there is someone out there with more skill than me when it comes to computers, i'm gonna bump.
 
I'm currently suffering the EXACT same symptoms on my PC.
What I did was the first time it hung I would turn it off then wait about 15 minutes and try again and it worked.
Sometimes i would get 4 short POST beeps then it would hang

I replaced the PSU and the CPU fan and that helped a lil bit.

All in all I personally it's the CPU. What exactly is wrong with the CPU I'm not sure so i'm hoping you find a resolution so maybe I can as well lol
 
sounds to me like either a ram sticks has died or the psu is dying.

easiest way to test that is to try booting it with only one stick of ram in it. if it boots fine, try another stick, etc. the stick it doesn't boot with is the bad stick, if none if the sticks boot up the pc, then its probably not the ram.

might be the PSU. do you have any other PSUs lying around that you could put in to test with?
if not...ehh....you could get a cheap one to use for testing, there only 10-15 dollars or so (even in pc stores like Circuit City) and its always good to have an extra one to test with when this sorta thing happens.
 
I had the a similar problem. My computer was sitting on the floor, because I am a moron, it wasn't even against a wall or anything. Well surprise surprise it tipped over. I tried to turn it back on, and the lights would come on and everything, but only for a couple seconds, then it would turn off. Well eventually, I thought to take the cd's out of the drive in case all this starting up on it's side would hurt the cd. I did that, and it started just fine. I hate BF2 in the cd tray. I don't know if it was trying to boot from BF2 or what.
 
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