PC Boot Problem

[dgreene86]

Got an few year old E-machines that I am trying to fix for my brother and am having some problems getting it running.
Worked as a tech for awhile so I'm not TOTALLY ignorant and here is what I have tried and what the problem is.

Turn on the PC, fan runs, CD-ROM light stays on...no beeps, no nothing no display etc. After much research I went ahead and took out the battery to reset the CMOS - turned the PC on and voila, it came on but it had long beeps...until I realized the RAM was out. Put some RAM in (DDR1) and turned it BACK on. The PC booted up fine with a little grinding sound from time to time, possibly the PSU going out (?). Realized the PS2 keyboard and mouse weren't plugged in, powered it down with the button on the front, retried with them both plugged in, and its back to nothing happening except the fan running. I'm fixing to pull my hair out.

My first conclusion would be that either the Power Supply is going out / turning the PC off when it was finally up and running messed it up again so I may need to reset the CMOS again? I just don't know if a bad PSU would cause this from happening or not...going to try and run a PSU tester on it externally and see and maybe it'll show some results? Not sure though, that's why I'm here.

I have checked different video cards and swapped the memory in and out different slots etc as well so we can eliminate that.

Any help would be awesome...thanks guys!

Dylan

 

[jsc]

The PC booted up fine with a little grinding sound from time to time, possibly the PSU going out (?). Realized the PS2 keyboard and mouse weren't plugged in, powered it down with the button on the front, retried with them both plugged in, and its back to nothing happening except the fan running.

PC boots without keyboard and mouse. OK. PC does not need Keyboard and mouse to successfully POST (generally single short beep).

You plug keyboard and mouse in. No boot. I'd think you had a problem with the keyboard or mouse assuming you described the symptoms accurately.

More troubleshooting ideas:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/page-261145_13_0.html

 

[dgreene86]

PC boots without keyboard and mouse. OK. PC does not need Keyboard and mouse to successfully POST (generally single short beep).

You plug keyboard and mouse in. No boot. I'd think you had a problem with the keyboard or mouse assuming you described the symptoms accurately.

More troubleshooting ideas:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/page-261145_13_0.html

PC did not boot at ALL with and without anything like keyboard, mouse, monitor etc plugged in. After reading that taking out the battery for awhile might help I did so and it worked until I shut it off using the power button after finding out the keyboard wasnt plugged in and the usb wasn't being recognized. So i can safely say keyboard and mouse are nowhere near the issue here.

Got home today after leaving the battery out all day long and still nothing. Fan comes on, mobo light is red, no POST or anything...fan just runs. I'm running out of ideas aside from testing a new power supply, but I don't know if this issue could be caused by one going bad. When it DID in fact boot up that one time, I did hear a bit of grinding so it may be the issue...no sure way to tell though.

Still up in the air... any other ideas would be great!

 

[dgreene86]

Just tested it again with another known working PSU from my other PC, all I hooked up was the main 20-pin power cable to the mobo just to see if it beeped or anything and still nothing. Power Supply and Processor fans just spin away with the red light on the mobo.

What vexes me most is how it worked the one time I removed the CMOS battery, but right after I shut it down using the power button, it went back to not working...