Video Problems

davidacorddavidacord Humboldt CA
edited March 2008 in Hardware
I found an old Dell Dimension 8100 with a free sign on it around the corner. I got it home and turned it on...it worked fine. I turned it off, unplugged everything, and opened it up to clean it. I checked the RAM which looks odd.

I turned it on again and the monitor won't come on. There is a "standby" LED lit on the mobo. I'm not sure if it was on before or not.

What Gives? I took the GPU out and put it back. No Change.


10:30 AM PST - I woke up and gave it another shot. It works!?
I'm putting XP on it now, but I am concerned that it might happen again.

I read another post by Harudath. I also did not receive a signal from the monitor. My caps lock light was not coming on either making me think its my CPU.

Comments

  • QeldromaQeldroma Arid ZoneAh Member
    edited March 2008
    I'll take a stab at this-

    It's likely a hardware issue. I have to be honest here: If it goes beyond a PSU, system battery or similar simple fix others may think of- it's not worth it ... except maybe for the experience and spare parts.

    This system is pretty old, probably in the 5-10 years ballpark. System battery is a good guess. But it's also old enough to have a sagging, leaking or burst capcitor or few on the motherboard or other component (I'd give up on it here). The power supply could be a special form factor that may not fit a off-the-shelf PSU, but you could at least try one outside of the holder. Also look at all your connectors and cards- disonnect/remove them and inspect them for damage/discoloration. If the memory "looks odd", you'll have to tell us what "odd" is or better still- post a picture.
  • davidacorddavidacord Humboldt CA
    edited March 2008
    The reason I said the memory looked odd was because its rdram and I had never seen it before. It happened once today after reconfiguring the system but hasnt happen other than that.
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited March 2008
    You may also want to remove and reseat the CPU, the Ram and any other cards in there. It's possible something got slightly bumped with it being jostled around. It could be a bad GPU, but any failing hardware may cause intermittent startup problems. I'd suggest running memtest on that bad boy as well.
  • HarudathHarudath Great Britain Icrontian
    edited March 2008
    This is going to sound stupid, but I've found that if I don't use my smaller/older screen for a while then it takes ages to work- I have to turn it on and off reapeatedly for about two hours before it works, before that it does the same thing this does. It might be worth trying :D

    EDIT: Did they say WHY it was free to take?
Sign In or Register to comment.