No Signal

[kmart123]

Specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 3.16 GHZ

ASUS P5Q Pro P45

MSI R4850 512 MB

2GBx4 DDR2 RAM

Corsair TX 650 W

WD 640 GB Cavier Blue

Memorex DVD-ROM

Acer x223W

Windows XP SP3


So I just finished up a semester at college and I brought my year old PC back home for winter break. I dusted the interior, reconnected the cables, booted up, and the monitor stays in standby mode. This was with a DVI cord, so I tried the VGA cable with DVI adapter and still no signal. I tried my my dad's PC with my Monitor and the cables I was using and it worked fine. So something is wrong with my computer, not the monitor.

I think either something became dislodged on the drive home, or I accidentally fried the circuitry with static electricity when I dusted the interior. I talked to my friend, who knows a lot more about computers than I do, and he suggested swapping out components with my dad's PC to figure out which one's are toast and which ones aren't.

My questions:
Is this reasonable advice? Am I missing something? If I do beginning swapping, is it safe to for my dad's PC components? If I put faulty RAM or a GPU in his motherboard, will it damage anything else?

Any suggestions are much appreciated, thanks!

 

[kmart123]

I forgot to mention that the keyboard and mouse aren't getting power, but the GPU fan, CPU fan, power supply fan, and case fans are running. The hard drive is receiving power, because I can feel it spinning, and the DVD-ROM is also receiving power.

Seems to me, it must be motherboard related. Is the only way for me to test if the CPU is operational, to put it in another motherboard?

 

[False_Dmitry_II]

Unless you have some kind of specialized testing equipment, yeah that's the only way to test.

It shouldn't do any harm to any other parts by swapping stuff out. Save for maybe a power supply in such a bad state that it zaps all parts it's connected too. I guess you could start with his power supply in your computer and then work your way out from there.

Go from the smallest set of stuff possible and switch out and go from there.