computer's dead...need to troubleshoot

[ridetoslide]

Hello, my daughters pc won't start up and not being a computer jock, I need some help troubleshooting this. When you push the power button, the green light comes on but I can't hear any beeps or sounds at all. The monitor has a green, red, and blue box that says " self test, check your pc and signal cable, monitor is working". Checked all external connections but everything appears normal. What should be the next step(s) to diagnose a bad hard drive, motherboard, etc? This pc is an AMD Duron 1200 running XP, 512ram, 30g HD, not sure about video card, not sure about the powersupply without looking. I can take it apart and give specific component names if needed. Right now I just need some help in determing what is wrong. I'm looking forward to your help and replies! Thanks in advance!

 

[zoinks]

When you push the power button, the green light comes on but I can't hear any beeps or sounds at all

sounds like a power supply problem execpt for your green light. you can take the cover off and actually see if the fans are spinning and listen for the hard drive spin up.

The monitor has a green, red, and blue box that says " self test, check your pc and signal cable, monitor is working".

your monitor is not getting a video signal from the pc.

you could check for a fuse inside the power supply, but that would be a lucky fix. you could try disconnecting the hard drive, floppy drive, etc. until just the mother board and video is left to see if something is wrong with those parts. pull power cables and interface cables to completely isolate those parts.

 

[ridetoslide]

Thanks for the ideas, I'll give that a try. How can you tell for sure if the motherboard is shot? Or for that matter the hard drive too? Thanks!

 

[insanarchist]

I would imagine the motherboard's shot. Unfortunately, the only reliable way to test it is to either A: buy a new motherboard and, if it works, the motherboard was the problem, or B: put known-good memory/processor into the board and see if it lights up.

Speaking of lighting up, have you had any electrical storms recently?

edit: the hard drive couldn't be causing this problem, as the computer would still beep/you'd still get video if the hard drive was dead.

 

[ridetoslide]

No electrical storms lately, my pc and other daughters pc's are fine. I took the cover off and the power supply fans are running. You can also hear the hard drive running. Tried opening a cd drive by pushing the button and nothing, and changed a couple of the IDE cables around no luck. Sounds like it could be either the processor or motherboard if I read the replies correctly. And the only way to check them is with other known good parts, right? Which of course I don't have any of . The motherboard is an EPOX, Ep-8KTA+. I may try to post a want ad for a used one and maybe processor too. Thanks again.

 

[zoinks]

sounds like a dead mb or cpu. there are different voltages coming from your power supply...+12v, +5v, -5v etc. 12volts is usually for fans and hard drive power, so its still a possibility that only one of the voltages have gone bad(you could test with a voltmeter). if you completely disconnected the hard drive then tried to start you would get video if the drive was bad.

swapping with known good parts is the only way to find out unfortunately.