Is there a rule of thumb method for diagnosing which components may be fried if your PC does not start up? I have a newish PC I got from one of those eBay store resellers (cowboom) that will not boot up when turned on and would like some help in figuring out where the problem lies. Here is the problem I have been having:
PC was completely functional one day, then powered down normally in Windows. The next morning, I pressed the power button and no POST beeps, no BIOS page, no video, no hard drive access noises, nothing. There were no hardware or software changes during this time, and no power losses or surges that I noticed. Currently the only thing that happens when the power button is pressed is the CPU fan, case fan and power supply fan all turn on, and the DVD drive spins briefly. There is power getting to the DVD drive, since I can open and close the drive tray. Holding down the power button for several seconds shuts off the PC like it normally should, but the power supply fan is now always running as long as the power cord is connected to my power strip. I have unplugged the cables and power cords connecting the motherboard to the hard drive, DVD drive, video card, RAM modules and all PCI cards. THis has not been successful in booting up either. Any ideas?
Here my system specs:
Acer Aspire T180 desktop
2.3 GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ dual core
1 GB RAM (2 x 512MB Nanya PC2-5300 DDR2)
Hitachi Deskstar SATA HDD 320 GB
250W Delta Electronics Power Supply
FoxConn MCP61PM-AM motherboard (i think)
Thanks!
PC was completely functional one day, then powered down normally in Windows. The next morning, I pressed the power button and no POST beeps, no BIOS page, no video, no hard drive access noises, nothing. There were no hardware or software changes during this time, and no power losses or surges that I noticed. Currently the only thing that happens when the power button is pressed is the CPU fan, case fan and power supply fan all turn on, and the DVD drive spins briefly. There is power getting to the DVD drive, since I can open and close the drive tray. Holding down the power button for several seconds shuts off the PC like it normally should, but the power supply fan is now always running as long as the power cord is connected to my power strip. I have unplugged the cables and power cords connecting the motherboard to the hard drive, DVD drive, video card, RAM modules and all PCI cards. THis has not been successful in booting up either. Any ideas?
Here my system specs:
Acer Aspire T180 desktop
2.3 GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ dual core
1 GB RAM (2 x 512MB Nanya PC2-5300 DDR2)
Hitachi Deskstar SATA HDD 320 GB
250W Delta Electronics Power Supply
FoxConn MCP61PM-AM motherboard (i think)
Thanks!