Computer won't boot

[drewm]

hello

i have a home built PC and haven't had any issues with it whatsoever since i built it 5 years ago.

however, when i turned it on today, on the boot up screen, it lists the CPU type, then it says "Memory Te" (the rest is cut off) and it won't go any further.

i tried turning off for a few minutes and turning on again, but no luck.

thought it might be a RAM issue... i have two memory sticks. i removed one, no luck. removed the other and put the original back in, no luck.

what is the probable issue here?

thanks.

 

[mykrowsy]

i speak from no experience whatsoever here, but possibly a BIOS problem? maybe try flashing the bios with a floppy disk and the latest firmware from the net. also remove any unnecessary components from the expansion bays in the motherboard and check all connections to ensure they're tight. That being said, a new motherboard to fit your processor and components could be found for under 50 bucks. if you can't even get through the POST operations, it's prolly not your hard drive.

 

[jsc]

Definitely. Lack of a hard drive will not prevent a successful POST (single short beep).
And if it worked one day and not the next, it is also probably not a BIOS problem. A component probably died, most likely the PSU.

Our standard checklist and troubleshooting thread:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/261145-31-read-posting-boot-problems

 

[bigal18]

This might sound very stupid, but I inserted the windows disk after putting the computer on and pressed F10 repeatedly, then exited form the boot from disk, something like that options, and did nothing when it said that, because it went to the start up, but still took about 15 minutes to start up. I did this with vista. Hopefully this works for you, but I don't think so. Note that I had to do this a bout 3-4 times before I actually worked. Now I have win 7.