No POST or video signal [Archive]

matpoh

6 Jan 2005, 4:43pm

I have a machine that all of a sudden will not boot up at all. No Post, no video, no beeps, nothing. Below are some things I have tried.

I swapped out the agp card with two others and a pci card I had around, nothing.

I unplugged all drives, nothing.

I pulled and reseated memory, nothing.

Cleared cmos with jumper, and replaced battery with a known good batt.

I have several items connected to the machine, but was wondering what to try next. Before I started troubleshooting it, I had 2 hard drives, two cdrw drives, and 8 fans hooked to two fan controllers. At one point, I thought I heard a faint crackling and three of the fans just stopped. (not cpu fan) The next time I rebooted, they ran so I ignored them. After about 30 more minutes of investigating, they stopped again.

Any ideas?

SSR_06

6 Jan 2005, 5:12pm

try just putting the bare essentals on, ram, cpu, video and see if it'll post at least. maybe try a differnt psu if you have one lying around also

Cyclonite

6 Jan 2005, 5:59pm

Crackling isn't good. Some voltage changes took place, which suggests the PSU. Definitely try a different PSU. Or, if you can, test what the voltage output form each rail is using a voltmeter. Large fluctuations in voltage will stop a compuer form booting correctly, and long-term exposure can continue to destroy components.

kryyst

6 Jan 2005, 7:59pm

Yeah sounds like your PSU they shouldn't crackle - it's generally a bad sign.

matpoh

6 Jan 2005, 11:24pm

I rounded up a power-supply tester, and it tested good. Does that just mean its working at the time? Would it be ok to run it a bit with a handfull of fans disconnected to further troubleshoot it or would damaging the cpu be a big risk? It just seems a bit odd to me. I have not had one issue with this until I turned it on this morning.

kryyst

7 Jan 2005, 12:39pm

I would suggest testing it with the mobo cpu and ram only first no drives attached and see if it posts. Then keep on rebooting and adding devices and see what happens.

What size of PSU is it anyway? You've got a lot of power being drawn off of it. I'd recomend a 450 for your set up - and a good 450 at that. Also unless you are seriously over clocking it you can cut back on the fans.

PSU's will just go sometimes it's as simple as that.

matpoh

8 Jan 2005, 2:53am

Update:
Well even thought the ps tested ok, I found a known good one. Kingwin 350W. I unplugged all fans except cpu, and still had no luck. Finally I pretty much gave up and just needed to get the thing running to get some files off it and pulled the mb/cpu and put an old slot P3-450. Same thing. I hooked it up to a different monitor and nothing. The older mb uses sdram and I have several sticks lying around and I did get it to post once with a 32mb stick, but nothing else and it hasnt done anything since. The only items hooked up are the video card (tried 4 different ones) and cpu fan.

I was then thinking it was shorting out some how in the case so I tried the original mb/cpu outside the case and still no post.

At a loss..........

kryyst

8 Jan 2005, 3:43am

so just so I have this straight you've now swapped everything and nothing works?

matpoh

8 Jan 2005, 4:29am

as far as I can tell. PS, cpu, mb, mem, batt, monitor, video cards, now I have basically 2 machines that dont work.

kryyst

10 Jan 2005, 12:41pm

well assuming you are doing everything correctly in assembling it all. Try a different power bar complete longshot but it's happened before.

maxanon

11 Jan 2005, 6:16pm

Sounds like a power source issue. Does your AC plug work? Was the previous sytem working?

matpoh

12 Jan 2005, 5:49pm

Well, you know what they say, 4th time is a charm.....I have reduced it to a bad video card I think. Every time I put a certain card in, it would completly disable the machine. On the fourth board and cpu, after I put in a pci video card, then it worked. I could then put in a different agp card but as soon as the original video card went back in it shorted out the whole thing again. Frustrating, but its going now.

Anyone ever seen a video card do something like this before. Its an old 32mb GeForce2 so its been in use for a while.

imported_oldtimer

16 Jan 2005, 6:13am

Well, you know what they say, 4th time is a charm.....I have reduced it to a bad video card I think. Every time I put a certain card in, it would completly disable the machine. On the fourth board and cpu, after I put in a pci video card, then it worked. I could then put in a different agp card but as soon as the original video card went back in it shorted out the whole thing again. Frustrating, but its going now.

Anyone ever seen a video card do something like this before. Its an old 32mb GeForce2 so its been in use for a while.

It seems like just matching your components.
No but it's time to upgrade,and not a big loss in the trash.You must have had several years use or was it from a bargain bin ?
:p