Help. System wont boot, screen is black

stevet · April 5th, 2004, 06:23 PM

Got a new system about 1 month ago. has worked fine until today. system is running generally 3 days continuosly. switched on today and got nothing. no monitor output, no input devices, possibly no floppy, no 'beeps'. cd rom and dvd rewriter power up. system comprises:
k7vm400m mainboard
phoenix k7 bios
amd xp 2200+ cpu with fans???
256 ddr ram
40Gb maxtor ata 133 harddrive
msi dvd rw
sony cdrom
floppy drive???
10/100 LAN card
hauptage wintv express card
I am running xp home, and am networked to another desktop and a laptop through a switch, wireless access point and router for 1024/256Mb broadband.
have norton internet security 2003 and haven't detected any probs previously.
Have checked all connections, tried swapping hard drives, booting into safe mode (F8 key), running recovery cd (bios set to A,C,SCSI),windows xp boot floppy set, and finally removing cmos battery to reset bios. not sure what i'm doing on the bios bit though. please help.

stevet · April 5th, 2004, 06:23 PM

also can't get into bios on boot up

Omardeth · April 5th, 2004, 06:30 PM

did you build it ? or did you buy it ?
whats the video card ?
how big is the power supply ?
did you load any new software or drivers ?

stevet · April 5th, 2004, 06:33 PM

replacement pc for insurance write off (old 386).
On board video
300w atx
no new drivers, but installed dlink wireless G access point configuration software. saturday. everything was ok after this

Bovon · April 6th, 2004, 02:08 PM

Check to see if your power supply had died an early death.
Check to see if any fans spin up when the power switch is turned on.
Replace video card with any old card if you can determine there is power supply output.
Test monitor on another computer.
ATX case switches sometimes go bad. The reset switch is the same and interchangeable..try swapping the case on/off switch for the reset switch.

stevet · April 6th, 2004, 02:38 PM

system is getting power. fans ok. monitor works on another machine. think either cpu is dead or bios problem. could it be a dead cmos battery?

John Prophet · April 6th, 2004, 02:46 PM

I dont think a dead cmos battery would prevent the video from kicking on.
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shouldnt be the case switch either since the machine is at least attemting to boot

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one standard thing to try is to strip it down to just the essentials and see if it gets video then....pull out any pci cards, pull off all the ide/floppy cables from the motherboard, pull the power plugs from the hard drives and optical drives...so you end up with the cpu/heatsink, onboard video, one stick of ram...and that about it.....if it doesnt boot to video there then its either the cpu, motherboard, power supply..or possibly ram but I dont think this is a ram issue.

At least by doing this you narrow it down quite a bit.

JP

stevet · April 6th, 2004, 02:47 PM

thanks john. give that a go now. do i need cmos battery fitted to reset bios?

John Prophet · April 6th, 2004, 02:59 PM

hmm, not sure about that one....in all probability you could run totally without a battery as long as you didnt reboot....but Im not sure.

dystopialives · April 6th, 2004, 04:17 PM

Back in my A+ class, one team came up with this problem. The instructor wouldn't stop laughing, in the end he had replaced the processor with cardboard. Fans spun, no bios beeps, no video as you explained, from my experience, perhaps a defective processor?

oh, on the battery, newer pcs will normally find the hdd and all hardware, but will simply forget the time , boot sequence you might have set etc.