[Avel]

Hiya-
I online game, and have 2 PCs active for this; I came home after a weekend away to find that the old, old 2nd PC suddenly won't power-on - specifically, pressing the Power button makes the lights give a brief pulse for like 0.1 of a sec then die again right away, nothing else does anything. I didn't do anything to the PC in between it working fine on Friday and it being dead on Sunday.

Am I right in suspecting that given the ancient nature of the system, it's not worth trying to save and I should just steal the hard drive and run? It's a Celeron 500 ... built by a friend a few years ago, nothing changed since then bar sticking a newer gfx card in maybe 18 months ago and RAM from 256->512 also.

I'm not very technical, the furthest I went so far was to open the case and make sure the cards and memory sticks and PSU still all seemed to be seated firmly. Anything else trivial I can do? I'm not keen to throw it away, but I'm aware that its old enough that its components are pretty much junk now.

Thanks for your help.

Edited by Avel, 09 June 2005 - 06:44 AM.

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Hi,

It could be any number of thinks hardware related and if its that old my guess would be it don't have a case speaker witch could help us out by giving us beep codes.

A couple of simple things you could try would be reseating the ram or try the ram in a different slot.

Look closely at the motherboard capacitors if they look bulged or are leaking then the mobo has failed

With you not being techy and the nature of the computer I can't think of anything else that would help but I did notice you didn't get a response and want you to know that the people here at GtG did have a look so be sure to come back

Rick

[Doby]

Hi,

It could be any number of thinks hardware related and if its that old my guess would be it don't have a case speaker witch could help us out by giving us beep codes.

A couple of simple things you could try would be reseating the ram or try the ram in a different slot.

Look closely at the motherboard capacitors if they look bulged or are leaking then the mobo has failed

With you not being techy and the nature of the computer I can't think of anything else that would help but I did notice you didn't get a response and want you to know that the people here at GtG did have a look so be sure to come back

Rick

[Avel]

Thanks Doby. I'll try those poking options, then most likely take the HDD out to salvage my data and get another cheap box; think I can at least handle installing a drive probably Reply appreciated, tho, I will fiddle briefly as you suggest before I give up.

[Avel]

Well, tried removing memory one at a time and trying each slot, tried making sure everything is seated properly in its slots, and no sign of any bulging or leaking capacitors, so... I am probably done and will salvage data and chuck the rest, unless anyone else has a bright idea thanks for your help though

[Hemal]

try running memtest86- just google it and download it to test your memory

[audioboy]

its possible the power supply went south on you. you could try swapping it out, but that is not a gauranteed fix, and I dont want to have you spend money needlessly. it might also be an old style AT power supply, as opposed to the newer ATX.

you could salvage many parts out of that PC, such as CD drives, floppy drive, ram, any PCI cards you have. these could be used in a new machine if you wanted to build one, or have a friend who could do the build. possibly look into a barebones kit, in some cases they come with the mobo, cpu, and ram all installed in a case already.

if you dont want to build at all, it could be worth it to go to a local computer shop, as they could provide the new stuff you need, install anything you want from the old one, and get you going. not sure how much their labor charges are though, so talk to them about it, and get a comparison of doing something like that as opposed to just buying a whole new box. then compare that to whatever prices you can get a new box for online, and make your decision from there.

[scrushmaster]

Yeah audio boy hit it on the head. I also had the same problem and I found out the psu fan slowed down because it was old and very dusty, which cause the psu to go south. Then when i turned it on it went on for like .1 of a second then died. Go to the store and pick urself up a cheap power supply or pm me and if your in the area i might be able to send you one of my many laying around psu's. lol