Complete b0rkage :(

My PC has completely stopped working. I know that some of you have worked with the hardware before and I thought you might know what to do. Anyway, here's the scenario:

Someone brought an annoying game, and tried playing it. It worked for a while, then the computer suddenly restarted. So they decided to play it again. It restarted again, so their solution was simple. Re boot, and play the game AGAIN. The third time around, it just shut down, and didn't restart. I wasn't at home when this was happening, so I couldn't stop him.

Now, he had the sense to just leave everything and go away. When I tried to power on the machine , the power light went on, but nothing else happened. Nothing. No activity of any sort. I thought it might be a graphics card problem, so I shut down, and opened up the case. I took out the card and used the default one on my motherboard. It didn't make any difference at all.

I realised that that was pointless. Then I noticed that when I power on, the case fan and the CPU fan just go on for about a second and then stop running. The motherboard is still recieving power (light on the board is on) but there is still no activity. I just tried to unplug the RAM module and put it back, and still no difference.

Anyway, this is definitely not something I can fix. Does anyone have any ideas on what might be wrong?

I've not installed any new hardware. PC is a P4 2.4 with 256 MB Ram. I'm at my wits end, so any help would be appreciated. I can't think of anything other than a problem with some IDE device... I've to still check that out.

This happened to my moms computer last year. It turned out that the processor fried somehow. It wasn't because of the CPU fan though.

So, it sounds like your CPU croaked. I suggest taking the CPU out and looking at it (and other parts in your computer like your RAM) for burn marks.

may be unrelated but..

my old K62 400 had a rescue disc.. all you needed to do was, put it into the cd/rom, and reboot.

it would wipe the PC and all was well.

my son bought a game.., cannot recall the name, but its unimportant.. the reason i mention it was this, if you left the game cd in the cd/rom it would partially reformat the comp.. not in any way that required you to verify any of it, but enuff to cause the comp to be unable to boot.. no amount of fixing would salvage the system.. you were forced to reformat ..

as i said, its prolly not related, but i need to ask, have you attempted a reformat?

have you attempted a safe-mode boot?

have you pressed the appropriate "F?" key to enter setup and set it back to "default"

these are all shots in the dark, but its a start..

hope it helps..

If its the CPU thats a pretty s**tty situation there.. Check to make sure the motherboard didnt burn either where the CPU socket it.

it could also be a dead CMOS battery... very unlikely but it could be.

My solution, get whoever was using that computer to pay for a new CPU or whatever repair the computer needs.

Wild Card said:
My solution, get whoever was using that computer to pay for a new CPU or whatever repair the computer needs.

if its a sibling, it defeats this, cause mom and dad will buy it..

Oh, and did you check your system head to toe for any loose connections? :rolleyes: You'd be suprised... I when I installed my new CPU and ram back in January, after I had installed them, the computer wouldnt boot, same senario as you... 'cept the problem was genious me didnt plug in the IDE cable to the hard drive.

may be unrelated but..

my old K62 400 had a rescue disc.. all you needed to do was, put it into the cd/rom, and reboot.

it would wipe the PC and all was well.

my son bought a game.., cannot recall the name, but its unimportant.. the reason i mention it was this, if you left the game cd in the cd/rom it would partially reformat the comp.. not in any way that required you to verify any of it, but enuff to cause the comp to be unable to boot.. no amount of fixing would salvage the system.. you were forced to reformat ..

as i said, its prolly not related, but i need to ask, have you attempted a reformat?

have you attempted a safe-mode boot?

have you pressed the appropriate "F?" key to enter setup and set it back to "default"

these are all shots in the dark, but its a start..

hope it helps..

Your hearts in the right place, Orph. But, to no avail. :smile:

If the situation was described properly. It is NOT starting at all. As in the computer gets power for 1/2 a second and stops. Which means he gets nothing on the screen.

This is a huge flashing sign that the CPU is funked up. Because, even if your system had messed up RAM it would start and then give an error ... but the CPU is needed to do ANY operation thus the on-off effect. :smile:

[EDIT]

the problem was genious me didnt plug in the IDE cable to the hard drive.

...Did you have some weird feature enabled? It should boot with no HD attached just fine. It will whine like crazy, but it would boot BIOS and such.

[/EDIT]

Wouldnt BIOS yell out some series of beeps to tell you your CPU is br0ked.

WC .... please, rethink and edit your post.

If you're confused as to why let me ask you this: How can BIOS be ran if there is no way to run ANY operation? (Short of having a Duel Processing computer, in which case this wouldn't be as big of a problem)

crono, the situation i described, when it happened to me.. left my screen blank, and a cursor flashing endlessly.. if its software related (which even i doubt) its solvable with a reformat..

if its genuinely hardware related (and the game situation a coincidence) Mr. Fragman is screwed..

if its bios related.. he can maybe reset it to default.

all are probable outcomes :smile:

No, Orph, I'm sorry they aren't all probable outcomes. :smile:

And here's why:

Then I noticed that when I power on, the case fan and the CPU fan just go on for about a second and then stop running. The motherboard is still recieving power (light on the board is on) but there is still no activity.

There is most likely some burnt goods in the computer. Either the CPU or Motherboard. But I'm thinking it's the processor.

I never said that your situation was incorrect, I just said that this is not a software issue. I'm actually rather confused as to why you brought it up lol.

Hmm ... does anything look burned or something ? Maybe you could take out a piece of RAM-memory, could be broken. Check your power cable too ...

Crono, you read worse than Lep and Jeff combined... i fear, its a case of, you simply MUST argue, and it makes you blind..

Crono said:
No, Orph, I'm sorry they aren't all probable outcomes. :smile:

And here's why:

Then I noticed that when I power on, the case fan and the CPU fan just go on for about a second and then stop running. The motherboard is still recieving power (light on the board is on) but there is still no activity.

Orpheus said:
crono, the situation i described, when it happened to me.. left my screen blank, and a cursor flashing endlessly.. if its software related (which even i doubt) its solvable with a reformat..

if its genuinely hardware related (and the game situation a coincidence) Mr. Fragman is screwed..

if its bios related.. he can maybe reset it to default.

all are probable outcomes :smile:

I completly understood, Orph.

I was just pointing out that this is not software related ... as you kept saying "it might be" that's all.

I don't like arguing, believe me.
Also, I wasn't arguing in this entire thread. I had the impression that you were fixed on the idea that it wasn't the processor, which it is (if it isnt I'll be surprised, but it's definatly hardware, at the very least). That's all.
Sorry if it seemed like I was being a dick or something like that. I was just trying to clairify, but sadly, most of my clairification efforts are taking the wrong way ... or read improperly ... I don't know which.

Also, I'm still confused as to where you think I'm being blind. Maybe I'm missreading your post ... I can highlight the remarks I'm refering too in red if you like ...

My solution... slap the person who did this[it will make you feel better] and then fix the prob, my freinds pc broke a week ago because his friend mucked about with it too much and broke the mother board. he slaped the person who did it and he felt better :wink: <!-- ZoneLabs Popup Blocking Insertion -->

Crono, i wouldn't change you for nothin in the world bud.. i think, the reason you keep being misunderstood, is cause you are trying to hard to fix stuff thats not wrong enuff to be worth the effort.

That makes you seem argumentative.

allow yourself, the right, to be misunderstood, it makes you more human.

stop trying so hard to be perfect.

if you stop looking for other peoples wrongs, and concentrate on the portion they might be correct in, you may find some common ground.

i like you, just the way you are.

be good

i like $loth's idea

Well I'm with Crono on this one- Orph, you didn't seem to read that his PC just wouldn't turn on in the first place, and your single relevant piece of info, that "he is screwed", is hardly helpful, and I don't see why you're having a go at Crono for anything. But anyway that doesn't matter.

First of all, obviously check all cables and gubbins are plugged in properly- I had the exact same problem as you, with a (new) PC that suddenly decided to stop working, I can't remember exactly what the problem was but it was related to overheating. I broked it though so had to take it back...

When you turn on a PC it does a quick power check to test voltages etc., which apparently takes up to half a second. I think it should only reset if it fails this though? It then loads up the BIOS and checks for a graphics card. CMOS is loaded after the memory test, so I doubt it's the CMOS battery. So maybe you just have a knackered BIOS, or the processor is fried. Either way, solution is to take it in to someone to look at if you're not up to trying a different power supply or motherboard etc...

A good thing to try is to take out all your PCI cards and unplug all extra drives - I think it is a possibility that the power supply has given up, and so reducing the load as much as possible might allow the thing to start. Also the way it gradually failed leads me to believe that the CPU is not fried - a CPU is generally either 'fried, or 'not fried', there is no 'a bit fried' which would allow it to turn on again after it crashed during a game. That's assuming it didn't overheat, but you say the CPU fan is spinning and stuff. I suppose a final possibility is that the voltage regulators on the motherboard have given up... they should be pretty close to the CPU, and if they have died, I would expect some burning around them.

So, see if you can try someone elses PSU (don't try your PSU on somebody elses PC, if the PSU is broken, you don't want to break their system!), as this is a definate possibility, and the cheapest thing to replace. Then it might be nice if you are able to try your CPU in somebody elses PC. By testing these two things you can conclude whether the problem is the motherboard, the processor, or the PSU.

Heres an acheivement... Orph and Crono... arguing... but not in a thread started by me :biggrin:

LOL.. i like how my "having a go at crono"

in all the time i have been here, is such a mild difference of opinion been reduced to that one term :biggrin:

i just got in, from a long run and was near sleep.

sue me :wink:

my first comment on this page, was heart felt.. learn from it people. you won't see it often, and its meant in the exact spirit it was typed in :smile:

to clarify my comment, he mentioned a game, that was all i read.. i left the opinion extremely open ended..

Orpheus said:
to clarify my comment, he mentioned a game, that was all i read.. i left the opinion extremely open ended..

gah, Orph playing mind-games again, with those fake links

fishy said:

Orpheus said:
to clarify my comment, he mentioned a game, that was all i read.. i left the opinion extremely open ended..

gah, Orph playing mind-games again, with those fake links

huh?!?!

links are yellow for one, and i wouldn't know how to fake one.

its just and underlined comment to make it more pronounced, i could type it in caps, but its hardly worth yelling it to anyone :/

ahh. maybe the wrong smilie, but you normally pick up on my humour quicker than that.

agreed, on the snarkpit links are yellow, but whenever i see underline, i think it's a link too. don't you?

Crono: I hope to god it's not the CPU. I can't afford a new one and I don't think the warranty on this still exists, or whether it even has one. I will check for burn marks, but they might not be obvious to find?

Orpheus: It doesn't even go that far into the boot. Just recieves power and stays put.

Wild Card: I replaced the CMOS battery. No use. I checked for loose connections everywhere, will check again. All IDE cables are fine.

Forceflow: already done mate. No use.

Leperous: Do you have any idea what the problem was? I suppose that could be some help here...

Scary-jeff: I tried removing everything and running it, absolutely no avail. It just doesn't respond. I'm working on trying to get someones PSU and check. I hope it's something as simple as a PSU

sigh I've called my supplier in to take a look. I have a bad feeling about this :sad: Things have been seriously screwed up in my life over the past few weeks... (/me will go an wallow in self pity elsewhere). Now I don't even have internet access all through the day. Just whenever I can get at the laptop :sad: Sorry for all the short responses but my time is up (in so many different ways)

If it is the retail CPU (came in box with heatsink), then it should have a 3-year warranty. If not, it should at least have a one-year? I know in europe all ecltronic goods have a one year warranty at the very least.

The motherboard should still operate with a dead battery, it just won't remember its settings. If it just starts and stops it could be your CPU as Crono said. The problem is, if it were frying without overheating there could be some major voltage problems on your computer, are you using a generic powersupply?

Voltage problems should be recognised in under a second, I believe; shouldn't modern processors be fairly protected against things like this? (barring power surges)

sizzled electronics, have a distinct odor, even if only slightly fried.

my old 1.4 athlon recently smoked.. it made sizzled noises, and shut off.. i could find nothing obviously burnt.. and had i not witnessed it when it happened, i would have pawned it off as something minor..

use your ol' sniffer, its distinct..

Leperous said:
Voltage problems should be recognised in under a second, I believe; shouldn't modern processors be fairly protected against things like this? (barring power surges)

Generic PSUs tend to fry stuff. They have spikes and brownouts all the time. I had a similar sounding issue with my friend's computer. I was playing BF1942 and the computer just shut off for no reason. The PSU blew and took the CPU/Motherboard with it.

I think it's definitly worth it to shell out an extra 10 to 20 bucks for a reliable power supply (when building other people's computers they always give me s**t because the power supply is more expensive then the one they were looking at, and they just don't understand the reason why, even after I tell them.)

Anyway, you can check the CPU by removing the heatsync. If there's a big ass black mark ... cry.

It could verywell be the board or power supply as well, however, I really doubt it. (Pray it's your powersupply and that it miraculously didn't fry anything else in the process of it dying).

I have a funny story though, a friend of mines computer was screwing up a lot, so he gave it to me to look at. I began installing an OS and such (the drive was blank, since he wiped it) , and I noticed that ... the top of the damn thing was getting incredibly hot. And then it froze ... turned out, for some reason, he replaced the fan inside the powersupply and he put it on backwards

So, we flipped it and all was good ... but that was a pretty close call, he's lucky, lets hope you are too, Frag :smile: .

I know here, Warranties are flakey as hell, The place I usually go to has their own 1 year warrenty on all parts they sell, but if you buy it anywhere else you rely on the manufacture warrenty, which is usually non-exsistant.

Orph: Well at least I'm not hated :smile: .... right?

Crono said:
Orph: Well at least I'm not hated :smile: .... right?

the way i see it, you beat yourself up more often than anyone around here does :razz: