[intelligentx]

Hi everyone!

I'm new to this site, and need your help desparately (me without computer = me without oxygen; it hurts). Here's the problem:

I was surfing the net when a small mechanical "click" came from my computer. Immediately, the monitor stopped receiving signals, and blacked out. The power continued to run, but nothing else happened. When I restarted the computer, there was no POST, no beep, and no display. The optical drives did the usual spin-up, but after that, there was nothing. Any ideas as to what could be wrong?

My system specs are:
Gigabyte 8KNXP motherboard (dual bios, dual power system)
Intel P4 3.0 Ghz 800 fsb
2 x 512MB Kingston DDR PC3200 RAM
ATI Radeon 9600 graphics card
2 x 120 GB Western Digital IDE HDDs
Creative Audigy 2 ZS sound card
420W PSU

So far I have tried:
reseating RAM and booting
removing RAM and booting
reseating all cards and plugs

Thanks in advance!

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I would suggest that the most likely thing is that your PSU has died. As you apparently have access to another computer I would suggest trying it's power supply.

Observe anti-static precautions and try booting just the motherboard, RAM and video card from the alternate PSU (do not connect HDD, CDROMs, etc. and pull all additional cards).

[Kurt_Aust]

I would suggest that the most likely thing is that your PSU has died. As you apparently have access to another computer I would suggest trying it's power supply.

Observe anti-static precautions and try booting just the motherboard, RAM and video card from the alternate PSU (do not connect HDD, CDROMs, etc. and pull all additional cards).

[intelligentx]

Hi,

Thanks for your suggestion, but would it be a PSU problem if the fans are still spinning and the HDDs + optical drives still spin up when i turn on the power?

[Kurt_Aust]

These things aren't always a clean failure, I had a problem with the computer freezing that was eventually traced back to low line voltage (what you get when you don't build a new power station for 10 years in NSW), CDROMs still seemed to work fine even though the motherboard stopped.

As a common failure point it's worth eliminating before going to more exotic and expensive options. If it doesn't boot, try using your RAM and then your video card in the other computer (if compatible, only need to boot to BIOS) to remove those possibilities.

[intelligentx]

Fair enough, I'll try finding another PSU then (I'm using a laptop at the moment, so I can't exactly pull the PSU out of this one ) I think it'll be a day or two before I can get my hands on one of those. So, I'll post back when I've done the test.

Thanks!

[Tyger]

It could also be a hard drive failure, you might try completely disconnecting one drive at a time.

[Doby]

I agree, the click usually means the hdd has problems so try disconnecting the hdd and see if the machine will boot into bios or from a boot disk. If it does you will need to replace the hdd. I think that if the click came from the psu it would have totally shut down but you never know with a psu.

I just suggest to remove the hdd and try and boot to bios or from a boot disk because its a little eaiser than finding and replacing a psu but if it don't work out you will have to anyway

If it does not boot to bios the next likely suspect would be the psu or video card

Rick

[intelligentx]

Hi, I have considered the possibility of a hard drive failure, but if this was the case, the computer would at least be able to go through POST and make a beep of some sort wouldn't it? When I turn on the power now, the HDDs and optical drives all spin up, but the floppy drive doesn't try to detect a disk. This leads me to believe that the computer cannot reach the point of loading the BIOS. My suspicion lies with something on the mobo. What do you think?

Thanks

[Kurt_Aust]

I would have thought so too, but what the [bleep], it can't hurt to try.

If you do try just booting with MotherBoard, RAM and Video Card and, surprise, surprise, it fails, at least you can definately say that the fault is limited to those components (and the PSU of course).

P.S. I can''t believe they censor the opposite of heaven.

Edited by Kurt_Aust, 17 October 2005 - 01:42 AM.

[intelligentx]

I would have thought so too, but what the [bleep], it can't hurt to try.

If you do try just booting with MotherBoard, RAM and Video Card and, surprise, surprise, it fails, at least you can definately say that the fault is limited to those components (and the PSU of course).

P.S. I can''t believe they censor the opposite of heaven.

fair call

That's one more thing to test for then.