[Janis]

One of our group pc's which is running XP Home was working fine last week. Now it never gets to the post stage. I changed the battery just in case that was it, still no post, no boot. Any suggestions on how to proceed with troubleshooting would be appreciated.

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What exactly does it do? How far does it get and what do you see?

[Ztruker]

What exactly does it do? How far does it get and what do you see?

[Janis]

It never goes beyond turning on the pc, fans running. I tried a second power supply but that isn't the problem. I changed the CMOS battery and a different memory module but that doesn't help. Just never get to hear that confirming beep. I suspect the BIOS chip or motherboard although the pc hasn't been subjected to any power surges.

[Ztruker]

Disconnect all external connections except mouse, keyboard and display, all cables going to the hard drive, optical drive(s) and floppy drive (if there is one), both power and data.
Remove any add-on PCI/PCI-E/AGP cards except the video (if there is one).
Remove all memory modules.

Power on. You should hear some beeps, probably one long or one long and two short to indicate no memory was found. If so, power off, plug in one memory module then power on, what happens.

If nothing, then use a bright flashlight and examine the tops of all the capacitors on the system board. They should be flat, with nothing leaking out. If any are bulging or leaking then the board is bad and needs to be replaced.

Example here: Bulging Electrolytic Capacitors

[Janis]

No sound, no beeps, etc. The capacitors all look clean with nothing swollen or indicating leakage. Is the BIOS chip easily replaced or does that take a tech with soldering skills?

[Ztruker]

Unlikely to be the BIOS chip, and if it is it is not easily replaced, even if you could get one. Much easier to replace the system board.

Are you sure the power supply you tried is good? If you have another similar system, you could borrow the power supply from there to try in this one.

This must be a fairly old computer. Is it worth spending any money on or would it be better to get a new one?

[Janis]

It is probably at least five years old. All items used are either donated or previous purchases of low end computers. The power supply was exchanged without any positive results so I have to assume the pc is not going to be fixable. Thanks for the guidance so far.

[Ztruker]

All that's left is the system board or the CPU. I think it's a goner.