Not sure where this should go, but please help

[cowboy728]

Hello everyone.

I reformatted a very old dell for a friend of mine, reinstalled window xp pro on it and everything worked perfect. so i shut it down and called them, they asked me to go ahead and put some anti spyware software on it. I went to restart it, everything turned on. but no mouse, keyboard or montior. So i opened it up and checked inside, the fans were still running, the power light was on, everything was connected right. First thought was maybe the video card went out, but why was the mouse and keyboard not working? Any idea's anyone?

 

[aford10]

If the monitor wasn't displaying anything, how do you know the keyboard and mouse weren't working?

If you're not getting any display at all, my first thought would be to double check the VGA connection. Make sure the monitor is turned on.

 

[cowboy728]

number lock on keyboard wouldn't not turn on or any lights for that matter, i have a laser mouse hooked up and it shows a red light when picked up. but in this case no light was coming out. the VGA was connection was fine checked many times, even unhooked it and re-hooked it to a different pc. everything worked fine with the other pc. The monitor was turned on

 

[aford10]

Do you hear the normal beep when it starts up?

 

[hang-the-9]

Try resetting the BIOS. Also, my favorite PC not starting thing to check, check the capacitors on the motherboard to make sure none are puffy or leaking. Many systems I have worked on with the issue you are seeing had a bad motherboard.

 

[cowboy728]

thanks for the advice. still cannot get it working after resetting the BIOS. I think you are right about the mobo.

 

[aford10]

Do you hear any beeps when it starts up?

From your brief description, it doesn't sound like the computer is POSTing. That can be caused by various different reasons, and it'd be premature to just assume that it's the motherboard.

 

[hang-the-9]

thanks for the advice. still cannot get it working after resetting the BIOS. I think you are right about the mobo.

Did you find any bad capacitors then? Even one can cause this issue. And the fun thing about them is that the PC can run fine for a long time with them, and one day not turn on.

 

[-lukin-]

Did you find any bad capacitors then? Even one can cause this issue. And the fun thing about them is that the PC can run fine for a long time with them, and one day not turn on.

This. Especially with dells. I cannot even begin to tell you how many times ive seen popped caps on Dells, especially the micro form factor models, mainly optiplex.