Please Help

[julie61554]

I am at my sister's trying to help her with her computer. I have a feeling it died! But I thought my someone who is more computer literate could help.

When you start it up all you get is a black screen. I can't even boot up from the restore cd. The light that is usually on for the hard drive access isn't coming on either. We already hooked up another monitor, and that wasn't the problem.

Does anyone know what I can do?

Thanks.

Julie

[Kung]

does it even get to the 'startup' screen (usually has the computer manufacturer's logo), or give you the choice to mash F2 to get into the BIOS Setup?

[julie61554]

no nothing....I even put the restore disk in and tried to just boot from that and nothing. I hit different f keys and nothing.

Julie

[Big Daddy]

Is it a Dell? They have a set of 4 leds on the back that will light up in pattern to indicate a faulty condition.

Do any lights come on, keybd, power led, etc?

On powerup, are here any beeps that are heard from inside the case?

No HD activity, does the CDrom spin up when you powerup to boot of the recovery disc?

No vid, along with no HD, and possibly no IDE/CDrom, I would tend to think the mobo is dead. Could be the chipset, CPU, or a few other thingies.

Could try reseating the CPU.

What you thinking Kung?
Power supply? Is there any noise or lights on powerup?

[julie61554]

thanks for your replies.

First off...it is an eMachines.

Ok here is what it does. The power comes on and the hard drive light flashes for a moment then goes off. She said it is usually on all the time when the computer is turned on. The cd-rom does spin and open up. Nothing is showing on the monitor though. I tried a different monitor. I tried turning the power strip off for 15 sec and back on. I made sure the monitor was plugged in the port good.

I did tell her to try opening it up and cleaning it out with a can of air. It is 5 years old and she says she has never done that.

Thanks for your help

Julie

[Big Daddy]

Well, it is getting power.
Before the PC boots up, a few things happen.
First thing is the video card is booted. You would see a split second where the video card info is displayed on the screen. This is real basic video, no drivers yet. It's just enough to show text on the screen.
Then even before a HD is read or a CD is read, the PC does a POST test. Power On Self Test.

This is even before video drivers are loaded, and you would see the plain white text on the screen as it does this. This is built into the chipset on the PC. It checks channels (bus) of communication between all the devices and hardware and such. The memory is checked. The Bios is checked and loaded.
It is during this stage that one could access the Bios and change parameters of the mother board and how all the hardware interacts.

You're not even getting here.

Then an operating system is searched for. HD, CDrom, floppy, if it can't find one, you'll get a message.

Your not getting any of this.

Now usually, if there is a video problem, you would here beeps to indicate this. They built a beep code into the system to indicate a fault in case of if there is no way of seeing a display.

You not getting this either.

I would think the mother board is dead.

5 years old, I bet there is a lot of dust in there. You could pop the cover, and plow it out as you said. Be sure to grab a hold of the metal case and ground yourself well before poking around in there.

Heat from dust build up will cause problems, and I have seen the expansion and contraction unseat cards. So you could be sure to blow any dust off the CPU and cooling fan. Remove and replace any cards that are plugged into expansion slots. All the while, be sure to keep yourself grounded to the case.

5 year old e-machine, may be time for a new PC.

[Hootmon]

Does it beep at all when you start it up? One short beep means a successful POST. Any other beep code (or no beep at all) is bad news.

[Hootmon]

5 year old e-machine, may be time for a new PC.Yeah. What he said.

[zzdust]

I'd also take out memory and daughter-board cards, air-spray connectors, and re-insert them back in.

Could still be video as cd-rom does spin, hard drive light flashes, some POST stuff is going on. Speaker may either not exist or be disconnected. Some computers wire the speaker through the sound-card.

[julie61554]

Thanks everyone for your input. I think she has decided it's time for a new system. The bad thing is that she didn't have anything backed up. I told her she needs to get a portable to drive to backup her documents.

Thanks again.

Julie:wave