Compaq Wont Boot

BattleToad · March 4th, 2005, 05:59 PM

The problem is that the computer is receiving power (lights come on, PSU fan kicks in, CPU fan kicks in, CD/HDD spins) but only shows a black screen when it is cut on. Actually it shows a black screen for about 3 seconds and then monitor goes to stand-by mode. What do you guys think? Bad VGA port on the mobo(onboard video)? Bad mobo? I looked closely at the mobo looking for some kind of wear or burn, or melted/leaking capacitors but found nothing. Everything appears to be in good condition.

Its a Compaq Presario 4403US

System Specs:
Intel Celeron 1.4Ghz
128MB SyncDRAM (PC133)
"Integrated Direct AGP 3d Graphics with up to 11MB dynamically allocated as video memory" (there is an AGP slot, but its empty and the VGA port is coming off the mobo)
Win XP Home

Any ideas?

doddsy · March 4th, 2005, 06:24 PM

unplug the monitor from the board and plug it in again...........make sure the screws are are tight, i got the same problem on an emachines rig where i really need to tighten the monitor plug screws down to get it picked up.

exact same symptoms, onboard graphics.

sr71000 · March 4th, 2005, 06:34 PM

yea...also, make sure it's tight on the back of the monitor..on some monitors you can actually take the vga cable off too

. Also...make sure everything in teh computer is seated properly...try reseating the memory...does it give any wierd beeps?

BattleToad · March 4th, 2005, 07:48 PM

I've tried remounting the cable again and again, and I'm using a KVM switch and its working fine with my main PC so i'm sure nothing is wrong with the monitor.

I've tried putting in an old PCI graphics card that I had and getting display off of that no such luck. Same thing.

No beeps or noises. Only think weird is the num lock light flashes on my keyboard.

BattleToad · March 5th, 2005, 12:10 PM

bumpage.

jrsweger · March 5th, 2005, 01:24 PM

If the numlock light only flashes once (or twice) that sounds normal for the POST routine. If it continues to flash, well that just isn't right? Have you ever had a beep when booting your machine?

Try unplugging anything that is plugged into the motherboard except the memory, processor and processor fan. Try to power up again.

Is there anything else that you've changed on this machine prior to this problem occurring?

BattleToad · March 5th, 2005, 04:45 PM

Its not my machine, I'm looking at it for a coworker of mine so I'm not sure what a "normal" boot routine is for it. She said that one day her machine just stopped displaying information. She tested her monitor on another machine and it worked fine. The machine does the same thing on my monitor (the one that I'm using to type this) so I'm sure that its not a faulty monitor.

Upon boot the monitor just goes to stand by and the num lock key on the keyboard just continually flashes, all fans and drives start operating normally.

I'm thinking bad VGA port on mobo (but I dont know cause when I put an old PCI video card that I had in there and tried running the VGA through there it still woudnt work), but a new mobo for this machine is like $150-200 (not sure why the freaking this is 100FSB with 2 SDRAM DIMMS and like 3 PCI slots, its a really crappy board, guess Compaq just wants to charge people out the wang).

Tried unplugging everything save CPU, CPU Fan, and RAM but had no effect, monitor still went into stand by and keyboard num lock flashed.

jrsweger · March 5th, 2005, 05:17 PM

Even though I don't think this will lead you anywhere, I found this on HP's website for this computer: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...ph04760#N10062

I think you should try disconnecting everything except the monitor and remove any PCI cards from the motherboard, disconnect the harddrives/cd drives/floppy drives and try to power up again. If there is more than one memory module, remove one. See if you get any beeps.

The only Compaq I've ever really seen, on power up there appeared the word COMPAQ on the screen, rather large and I think it was green.

BattleToad · March 5th, 2005, 06:19 PM

Yeah I've basically tried all those suggestions on the site, none of them work. And I've tried booting up with just the basic components but does the same thing. I'm thinking mobo has gone bad.

ASUS MAN · March 6th, 2005, 02:13 AM

the last time that happen to me it was the cpu