PC won't boot

[Humodour]

Heya. So today I went to turn my PC on and it did nothing. It was on, and the blue LED was showing, but the monitor wasn't getting a signal and the fan wasn't going or anything. I turned it off and then on again, but this time nothing happened at all. No blue LED even.

 

For the past year (or two) I've been running the comp on a low CMOS battery... so whenever I'd turn it on when I woke up, it'd often show a time many hours slow. Other than that, there have been no indications I need to replace the battery. Would a dry CMOS battery cause it not to start at all?

 

Dammit, I wanted to finish Baldur's Gate 1 this weekend.

[Deadly_Nightshade]

I once had a problem like this and it turned out the BIOs chip had blown-up.

[Humodour]

Well, you might be right. It's definitely not the battery. The biggest indicator of this was that a new battery didn't work.

 

And I don't think it's the PSU because a few LEDs are on... the PSU were broken, nothing would be on, right?

 

So it sounds like you might be on the money... how do I fix that?

[Deadly_Nightshade]

Well, you could see if the chip itself can be replaced - but it might be better, and easier, to get a new motherboard. In my case the PC was going to be retired soon anyways, so I just savaged what I could and disposed of the bad part.

[Humodour]

Well, you could see if the chip itself can be replaced - but it might be better, and easier, to get a new motherboard. In my case the PC was going to be retired soon anyways, so I just savaged what I could and disposed of the bad part.

 

True. I've been planning to get a new PC for ages now. It's just a matter of money.

[Deadly_Nightshade]

If money is an issue, try looking for an older model that could hold you over until you can upgrade - it may not be the best part but it's still better than nothing. You might also want to make sure the hard-drives are ok, as when my BIOs went it wiped out the boot sector of both C and D - although that was fixed by getting a friend to do a quick replacement of the missing items.

[moodringer10]

Thats what I did. As a poor college student i just looked for an older model

 

Joy

[Humodour]

This was the older model. I bought it in the university classifieds for $300 AUD.

 

AMD Athlon XP 3000+

512MB DDR1 RAM

Geforce 4 Ti 64MB graphics card

2*50GB HDs

 

Ah well, lucky I bought another similar system for $200 the same way... although it has a Voodoo 3, lol.

[mkreku]

Ah well, lucky I bought another similar system for $200 the same way... although it has a Voodoo 3, lol.

Haha, I have a Voodoo 5 lying around in some drawer somewhere. Never did I think my old Voodoo 5 would be more powerful than a GPU someone actually uses

 

I bought it for like $15 once when I was trying to get my old Elder Scrolls games up and running. The ones with Glide 3DFX support.

[taks]

Well, you might be right. It's definitely not the battery. The biggest indicator of this was that a new battery didn't work.

actually, it doesn't sound like he actually replaced the battery. yes, if the CMOS battery is dead your pooter probably would not boot. try replacing that, first, then check back.

 

taks

[mkreku]

Just a hint: very old motherboards didn't have flash memory to store their BIOS data. They actually used a battery powered memory to store that information, which meant that once the battery died, so did the computer. Forever. It was said that the batteries would last like 10-15 years, but lots and lots of old motherboards have died since, so that was a little too optimistic.

[Deadly_Nightshade]

actually, it doesn't sound like he actually replaced the battery.

 

Yeah, I did not - in my case the chip itself had melted.

[taks]

Just a hint: very old motherboards didn't have flash memory to store their BIOS data. They actually used a battery powered memory to store that information, which meant that once the battery died, so did the computer. Forever. It was said that the batteries would last like 10-15 years, but lots and lots of old motherboards have died since, so that was a little too optimistic.

which was one of the most moronic decisions i've ever seen from the PC industry.

 

a melted bios chip would definitely imply an inability to boot, btw.

 

taks

[Humodour]

Well, you might be right. It's definitely not the battery. The biggest indicator of this was that a new battery didn't work.

actually, it doesn't sound like he actually replaced the battery. yes, if the CMOS battery is dead your pooter probably would not boot. try replacing that, first, then check back.

 

taks

 

I did try replacing the battery - which is what your were replying to.

 

But I see a green LED on the mobo and my network card has it's orange LED on (but when I press on, the blue LED doesn't turn on). There is no sound from the computer - the fan isn't going. So it seems the failure it start isn't a power problem (PSU or battery).

 

It's a relatively recent mobo - has an Athlon XP, guessing gigabyte.

 

Will probably be getting a new mobo soon - oh well, thanks anyway guys.

Edited May 20, 2008 by Krezack