Hello everyone,
I recently received a free PC tower from a friend because it's not booting properly; my goal is to fix it. However, my attempt to fix it has ran into another issue. Before I begin I would like to say that I received little to nothing with this PC (no monitor, no keyboard, mouse, no manuals and even no power cord).
The PC is a Sony Vaio running Windows XP Media Center Edition. It has two sticks of RAM (unsure of the memory amount) and a nVidia (Chaintech?) 9600 GT 512mb video card with TWO DVI-I Dual Link ports. I believe it also has a Pentium 4 Processor.
The original issue is that the PC will not boot passed the Sony Vaio screen and emits a short single beep until I advised my friend to reseat the RAM (due to research of a possible DRAM Refresh failure). Now, it has no audible beep but still does not boot. Also, to my knowledge he couldn't access BIOS. All of the hardware, PSU, Motherboard, RAM and Video card look fine and every fan is running properly. The only malfunction is the DVD-RW and DVD-ROM drives do not appear to work. Upon powering up the system and pressing the buttons to open the trays, nothing happens.
Now to my first obstacle. In order for me to attempt to repair I need to see a display on a monitor. I have 4 monitors in my home, all of which are rather old and one of which is my Sylvania 19" HDTV that has a VGA port.
I have three adapters, two DVI-I to VGA and one (purchased today) DVI-A to VGA. At first I purchased the DVI-I to VGA hoping it would transmit a signal to either my monitor or my TV but it did not. After I found out my friend was using a DVI-A to VGA adapter I was hopeful it would work so I went out and purchased one today. Unfortunately it did not work, so now I'm in quite the pickle and have no idea what to attempt next.
Does anyone here have any suggestions on what I might be doing wrong or any theories as to what the problem might be?
Unfortunately I have little information on the system itself and I am not able access anything within the system such a BIOS, Screen Resolution, etc. If need be, I can attempt to post pictures of the system and the adapters I am using. Any, and all help is greatly appreciated!
Update: I'm not very familiar with video cards because I've never had a good one, I've always been a console gamer. Anyway, my buddy said the PCI-E cables weren't connected to anything. In fact, nothing is connected to the video card itself right now. Potential issue?
I recently received a free PC tower from a friend because it's not booting properly; my goal is to fix it. However, my attempt to fix it has ran into another issue. Before I begin I would like to say that I received little to nothing with this PC (no monitor, no keyboard, mouse, no manuals and even no power cord).
The PC is a Sony Vaio running Windows XP Media Center Edition. It has two sticks of RAM (unsure of the memory amount) and a nVidia (Chaintech?) 9600 GT 512mb video card with TWO DVI-I Dual Link ports. I believe it also has a Pentium 4 Processor.
The original issue is that the PC will not boot passed the Sony Vaio screen and emits a short single beep until I advised my friend to reseat the RAM (due to research of a possible DRAM Refresh failure). Now, it has no audible beep but still does not boot. Also, to my knowledge he couldn't access BIOS. All of the hardware, PSU, Motherboard, RAM and Video card look fine and every fan is running properly. The only malfunction is the DVD-RW and DVD-ROM drives do not appear to work. Upon powering up the system and pressing the buttons to open the trays, nothing happens.
Now to my first obstacle. In order for me to attempt to repair I need to see a display on a monitor. I have 4 monitors in my home, all of which are rather old and one of which is my Sylvania 19" HDTV that has a VGA port.
I have three adapters, two DVI-I to VGA and one (purchased today) DVI-A to VGA. At first I purchased the DVI-I to VGA hoping it would transmit a signal to either my monitor or my TV but it did not. After I found out my friend was using a DVI-A to VGA adapter I was hopeful it would work so I went out and purchased one today. Unfortunately it did not work, so now I'm in quite the pickle and have no idea what to attempt next.
Does anyone here have any suggestions on what I might be doing wrong or any theories as to what the problem might be?
Unfortunately I have little information on the system itself and I am not able access anything within the system such a BIOS, Screen Resolution, etc. If need be, I can attempt to post pictures of the system and the adapters I am using. Any, and all help is greatly appreciated!
Update: I'm not very familiar with video cards because I've never had a good one, I've always been a console gamer. Anyway, my buddy said the PCI-E cables weren't connected to anything. In fact, nothing is connected to the video card itself right now. Potential issue?
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