• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Help Troubleshooting PC?

dr.stevil

dr.stevil

[H]F Junkie
2FA
Joined
Sep 26, 2008
Messages
9,301
So I have an HP Pavilion 500-PC machine that was given to me a year or two ago. It's practically brand new and has been sitting in a closet for most of the time I've had it. Last time I had turned it on, it worked just fine.

I decided to re-purpose it to take over my media server duties so to give my power hungry gaming machine a rest. I dug it out of the closet and upon booting it, it wouldn't give me a video signal. Everything powers up and I can ever hear the HDD spinning away but the monitor doesn't show anything. I tried pulling the battery, resetting the bios, swapping out RAM and even just went to BestBuy to grab a $50 AMD R5 GPU, figuring that it might be the on-board flaking out. Nothing I've done will give me any sort of video signal.

It's equipped with an AMD APU, an MSI MS-7778 motherboard and 8GB of DDR3 ram.

Anyone have any ideas what the problem can be? I don't feel like throwing any more money at it unless I can figure out what the issue is. I've been screwing with it all morning and I'm ready to throw it across the room at this point
 
Umm.. if the onboard video was flaking out, that means the APU itself would need to be replaced since the APU provides the onboard video.

Anyway, did you try a different power supply?
 
Haven't tried a new PSU yet, but I think I can get access to one. It's worth checking out. As for the onboard, I more so meant the actual dvi port on the mobo. Sort of moot though anyway i guess since the discreet gpu didn't work either. Thanks for the suggestion. Hopefully I'll get a chance to swap it out later
 
Ok, so I robbed a PSU from another machine that works and no dice. I'm guessing the motherboard took a dump on me :\

Wonder what kind (if any) of warrenty this thing has. Perhaps I'll try and get something a bit more robust to replace it with?
 
Have you tried a different monitor and cable?
 
Skillz said:
Have you tried a different monitor and cable?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I tried several displays both with the onboard and the discreet GPU and none of them got a signal :\

Dangman said:
Probably no warranty left.

Try reseating the APU. Also, try doing this:
http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1033078594&postcount=3
Click to expand...

Good idea, it's certainly worth a try. The cpu cooler is snug, but who knows.

As for the link, there really isn't anything to this machine. It might as well be a test bench lol I can confirm though that I did get error beeps without ram installed... with the ram installed, it 'seemed' to run just fine (sans a video signal).

edit:

I also swapped the ram out with stuff from another machine that I know works fine. So it can't be memory related
 
Last edited:
It could have been stored away long enough for the CMOS battery to drain and/or corrupt stuff like timings.
Did you try simply removing the battery for a while or using the clear cmos jumper?
 
michalrz said:
It could have been stored away long enough for the CMOS battery to drain and/or corrupt stuff like timings.
Did you try simply removing the battery for a while or using the clear cmos jumper?
Click to expand...

Yup. It was one of the first things I tried :\
 
Anything particular about the closet? Mothballs? Critters? Humidity? Family members knocking it about whilst looking for stuff?
Was there anything particularly out of place when you connected it after storage? any odd smells or noises?
 
Nothing that I noticed to be honest with you. I wouldn't doubt it if my g/f might of knocked it around at some point :p, but there is no physical damage or anything indicating something happened. Humidity and critters are also a negative.

There is no burnt electronics smell either. Very strange. Maybe I'm just lucky lol
 
So it's between the girlfriend, bad luck and perhaps some odd side effect of waving around static-building garments for months and then applying mains.
I'd tear it down and rebuild it. We have the technology.
 
Also dry cleaning chemicals? moth sprayings or something of that nature?
 
No. nothing like that. Just some boxes really. Not a big deal but would of been nice to save it. Still going to try reseating the CPU and see what happens.

I have a PC that I'm parting out so maybe I'll just use the mobo and CPU from that if I can't get this thing to come back to life.
 
Did you test teh CMOS battery to see if it was dead?

A lot of computers will not POST (no video) if the CMOS battery is dead.
 
cyclone3d said:
Did you test teh CMOS battery to see if it was dead?

A lot of computers will not POST (no video) if the CMOS battery is dead.
Click to expand...

That never even crossed my mind. I'll try swapping it out tonight.

thanks for the idea. Crossing my fingers that it works.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top