Computer Help Please

[TB Roye]

LOML's computer would not start this morning. No Viedo Signal. Replaced her viedo card with mine, still no picture. The hard drive and all the little lights come on and the fans also, but no start up beep. It acts like it is booting but nothing. I assume it is the mother board. The computer is probably 5-7 years old, can't remember when I built it. I am going to my computer shop this morning to see about a new mother board,cpu and memory. The new mother boards all seem to have Serial ATA Hard drive support. LOML's HD is IDE. Question is can I still use her HD or do I have to replace it also? and how do I transfer all her files to the new HD? I had better not loose he favorite web sites or my life will be miserable. I used to be up to date on all this while I was working but since I retired I have other interest so I am behind the curve on this.

Tom

[Mr__Bill]

a quick guess is... power supply.

It powers on and spins the fan, powers what is connected to it but not the mother board. Try putting yours next to it and plugging in the leads to the MB from your power supply to her MB -- be sure to connect them in the right way. Power up only one power supply and see it it starts to boot. If so then a new PS in in order, look for one with a large fan and expect to spend about 50 to 100 bucks for a quiet one.

Good luck

Bill, on the Sunny Oregon Coast

[TB Roye]

Thanks Bill

It could be the power supply as it has been working fine. She turned it off last night and when she started it this morning nothing. Will try that. I have a power supply around here some place.

Tom

[radhak]

Something wrong at the monitor end - the CPU seems to be functioning.

First, check if the video cables have come loose. tighten at both ends.
Next, try replacing the same cables with another from a working machine.
Then, check if the power to the monitor has issues : again, loose cable, or bad cable.

[radhak]

To add - I wouldn't worry about the HDD etc now, but anyway, you will always be able to get stuff off of it. Rarely does a HDD fail with a blank screen.

[TB Roye]

I tried my Display card and monitor. Then I tried using her new HD LCD TV as a monitor with a new video cable and still nothing. Her card works in my computer. Theres is no boot up screen where you can go into setup, no post beep on boot up. But the light on the HD, and CD Rom come on. The is a light on the MB that is on I think it is for the LAN, cant' remember, but that is on even when the computer is off, unplug it and it goes off. I have power supplies go out but usually you get nothing. I can build a new on for $200 but still the problem of transering the files. Guess I could use her HD as slave in my computer and burn the file to a cd and transfer it that way, lot of pictures and her internet favorites, which I had better not loose like last time I lost two and she still remindes me. I would rather just plug in the HD and go.

Tom

[LCHIEN]

does the (A) HDD activity lights come on and flash for a minute or so (also you can usually hear the heads clicking as they move) indicating that the CPU is booting the OS?
(B) Or is the HDD just spinning but no access activity?

Big indicator of what may be wrong.

if A then the CPU is working, got to the OS but there is no display.
If B then the CPU is not working or at least getting to the point of reading the disk/booting the OS.
If (A) the display adapter is not working and the computer boots up then there is usually a POST beep code to tell you there is a video failure; a series of long and short beeps. In this case the card is bad, if there is no POST beep then the card is liekly OK but the connectoin to the monitor may be bad. The light on the monitor usually tells you something, too.. yellow for standby in which it will be blank or green if there is a data signal from the video card. If its green but there's no pic then the display is probably bad.

[crokett]

If there are no POST beeps, then the PC is not booting. Before you replace the motherboard, some things you can try:

Pull everything that can be - disconnect HDD, disconnect floppy, pull any sound cards, etc. The only things that should be installed are video card, processor and memory. If it POSTs, start adding stuff back till it doesn't.

If that doesn't work, and the PC has multiple memory sticks, reseat all of them and/or pull them all, then try booting with 1 at a time in the PC. If one doesn't boot you've found the bad one.

If none of that works, new motherboard.

To still use the old HDD in the new PC you would need an IDE controller. They are cheap. If you want to get a new ATA HDD then easiest way to get the files off the old one is get a USB enclosure and install the old drive in it. This gives you the bonus of having a drive you can back files up to when you are done restoring the machine.

[twistsol]

Most new motherboards that support serial ATA also have IDE connectors as well. (At least this was true last year when I built my latest PC) If you can't find one that does, you can pick up a USB-IDE or Universal adapter for about $30.00 Then you can use nearly any hard drive with any computer that has a USB port.

The link below is to a Mac Shop where I do much of my shopping, but this adapter works with Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX equally well.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer...gy/U2NV2SPATA/

[TB Roye]

Thank you all for the information. I just went and tried to boot it again after reseating all the cables. There is very little of no air coming out of the fan on the power supply and a funny noise out of that area, fan? Think I will start there as I have one that I know is good. Spent a lot of money on new Electronic toys this month Big Screen HD TV, Blu-Ray payer new LCD HD TV/DVD combo for LOML's den really don't want to build a new computer if I can help it. I will let you all know in an hour or so, have to go to the storage unit and find the power supply in al the extra computer stuff there.

Tom

[JSUPreston]

Based on what you are saying, I would agree that the PS is the likely culprit. BUT, don't discount the other suggestions at all.

8 or 9 years ago, when I was doing a little consulting, we had a client call with her machine beeping like crazy and wouldn't boot. I knew the system was within a month or two of the 3 year warranty expiring, so I made the hour long drive to see if it was a problem with memory, video, etc. Wanted to get the warranty claim in before warranty ran out.

Got on site did all the basic troubleshooting steps, pulling cards, reseating cables, etc. Finally determined that when the keyboard was plugged in, the machine would hang at POST with the self test on the screen, beeping like crazy and never booting. Thought I was dealing with a bad motherboard, until I tried another keyboard.

At this point, since we reselling the equipment, I told the client that it would be quicker and cheaper for her to go to Wal-Mart and get a new keyboard, since to process the warranty, we would have to find the original invoice, call the vendor (DTK), have the replacement shipped, etc. Sad thing is that I had to bill that customer for 2 hours time at $85/hr for a $15 keyboard. (we wrote off an hour of time..the bill could have been $250)

I had been building machines for years at that point and had never seen a keyboard cause that problem. To this day, it's the only time I've seen it. Moral of the story...troubleshoot everything to be on the safe side.

[TB Roye]

Update

Well have made some progress. It was the mother board, and it still might be. Installed and new MB, CPU and Memory. Had the floppy disk fail message on boot up and as usual the cable was backwards. It booteds and started to load window and got the blue screen of death. Tried every thing. LOML's HD works in my computer so that is ok. I am thinking there is a conflict with the device drivers and devices namily the onboard VGA and the divices and drivers listed on the HD. The new MB has on board Video while the old one had AGP video Card. Trying to find out what all the messages on the blue screen mean. I think what I am going to is boot LOML's HD on my computer and then go into device manager and remove the vedio adapter that is listed and the driver that go with it. This will allow the computer to find news when it boots. Not having done for 5 years or so I am a little rusty but it is coming back a little. Worse come to wors I will take into the shop where I bought MB and have them look at it.

Tom

[mpc]

Reboot her system... and pound on the F8 key as soon as it starts booting. This should pop up a boot menu in Windows. Select "safe mode" and continue booting. This will use a plain vanilla VGA video driver that is compatible with pretty much every video card/motherboard chipset out there. It also uses generic motherboard chipset drivers.

Once booted, you should be able to go into Device Manager and disable the old video drivers, the old motherboard drivers, etc. Then reboot... it should boot into regular (not safe mode) but still use the raw VGA driver OR it'll auto-detect "new hardware" and ask for updated drivers. You can skip past those for now or try to load drivers via CD/DVD, USB memory sticks written on a different PC, etc.

If the new motherboard came with a CD/DVD of drivers, load it and install chipset drivers, then video drivers, sound drivers, etc. Most have a "install everything" type of command. Then reboot again... you should have a normal system at this point.

Many folks recommend fresh Windows installs when changing hardware... I constantly change my computer piece by piece and I've never fresh-installed after any hardware changes. In fact, I generally don't delete old video or chipset drivers... so far Windows and the .INF files have been smart enough to load only what applies to the current computer hardware. In theory I can swap in my old motherboard or old video and everything should boot.

mpc

[TB Roye]

Udate #2

Well I tried my HD in LOML's computer and it worked fine but now I have reactivate
XP, d***. What is worse is LOML's HD will boot on my computer but the gives me an message "due to problems verifing the licience on window Xp you will have to activate this copy. Do you want to activate now?" I you click yes it goes into the Activate window and I have to call. If you clicke no remind me later later it logs you out and you can't go any farther, Double D***. So I don't know what the problem is now. Will probably take it in tomorrow. It might be cheaper to put a new HD in LOML computer and reload windows and copy the files from the old HD to the new one. enough for one day. I was hoping to get into windows and get to the device manager and try and fix the device list.

Tom

[RayintheUK]

So I don't know what the problem is now.

As I understand it, that's what the Microsoft OS is supposed to do, because you have significantly changed your computer. When you activate initially, the OS makes an inventory of the existing hardware, so that it cannot be used on more than one computer (assuming a single licence in operation).

If you'd put in just a new drive, and/or a new video card, or an add-on peripheral, no problem. What you've done, however, is significant enough to make the software believe that it's on a different computer altogether - hence your activation difficulties.

Ray.