Dead system

[Wannabee]

Please help. "extra" computer had not been turned on for several months. It was fine when it was last turned off. One day someone went to turn it on and nothing happened. Upon checking, it doesn't seem to go thro POST at all. The CD-Rom light comes on, but H/drive & Floppy drive lights do not come on at all. There is no beep to show initialization. The screen is completely dead. I can not get it to do anything different, no matter what I've tried. I've disconnected everything, including the Dimms & tried one by one. I've changed the CMOS battery. The only really strange thing, to me--is that when it is completely turned off, if you plug in the power supply cord on the back, it makes the tower power-on. All by itself. I have checked voltage and that all seems w/in range. Pressing F5 & F8 does not get me any results either. No CMOS??? The fan is running on the CPU as well.

Oh--It's a Bestec Power Supply, Intel '98 Chipset, Winbond Bios, MEB-VM motherboard, (running Win. 98 sEd last time it worked)

Thanks for your suggestions.

 

[Nick Scott]

You obviously have power otherwise no lights would come on for anything.

I would guess that the BIOS has a problem. See if it has a jumper that you can remove to reset everything back to factory defaults, set it to that and try to boot then.

Some m/bs also have a jumper which when set forces the system to boot and enter the BIOS.

If none of this works you may have to face up a dead m/b.

 

[Rockn]

Unplug the hard drive & CD-ROM cables from the MB. If that doesn't work, pull out all the cards except the video card and try to boot. Perhaps a card or peripheral is holding down the boot process.

 

[Nick Scott]

Are you getting any beeps at all out of the PC when you first turn it on? Depending on the pattern of shorts and longs (like morse code) you can sometimes diagnose what the problem is from these. Let us know what make your BIOS is though as the codes vary from manufacturer to manufacturer.

 

[Wannabee]

Okay Gentlemen: Thanks for your replies. However, I tried looking for jumpers near the Bios, but did not find any. Someone suggested that I disconnect everything & try that. I had already done that, but I did it again. Still no change. Someone asked me for the beep codes. I'm not getting any beeps at all. And I've checked this board for the 4-little lights, & it doesn't have them. So it prob. uses beeps--which I'm not getting. As I mentioned in the 1st thread, the unit has a Winbond Bios. I'm beginning to think the m/bd is dead. How would I check that????

Also, what wld make it power on by itself when you plug in the power cord? When I plug in the keyboard, the lights on the k/b flicker for just a sec. & then go dead.

Thanks for your help. Wannabee.

 

[Rollin' Rog]

If removing and reseating the cpu is an option for you -- and it sounds like it is, given what you've done so far -- you might try that. I've seen a few threads where that was the answer.

How do you know when the mother board is dead? Well if you've removed all the hardware, have reason to believe the power supply and cpu are good -- and still can't even get a BIOS screen -- that's the conclusion I'd come to.

Right now I'd say that's a good bet, you proably have some dead capacitors on the board that just can't get recharged.

 

[Wannabee]

Thanks Rollin' Rog. I'll try reseating the CPU. I thought about that last night but decided not to touch it (I'm such a "newbe"), but I guess if the m/b is dead, then I can't break it, can I

Dead capacitors sounds reasonable to me. The system was turned off for several months, and I know that's not a good thing. I'll reply further after I've had a chance to tear it down again.

 

[Steven715]

Capacitors tend to dye after a few years not months in my experiance ! Have you tryed anouther Graphics card? Try taking it out and seeing if there is a beep then I have seen 1 machine do this!
And try anouther PSU It dose sound like it is working but just to make sure!