I think I killed it.

Hi, I'm new to the forum. I got home last night and the computer was on, but the screen was blank. It won't boot up and the status light on the monitor blinks like it's not getting any signal. The past few days, the computer's been freezing and locking up with increasing frequency. I suspected overheating so I cleaned out the dust and the temp monitor read normally. Now when I turn it on, the fans and drives start up normally, but that's it. Nothing on the monitor. I made sure all the cards and memory were seated properly, to no avail. Any ideas? Did I blow the CPU or video card? Thanks.
P4 2.2
GeForce Ti4600
512Mb DDR
Audigy Platinum

 

do you get any beeps when you start up

 

Substitute another video card and it "should" work...

Sounds like it's booting up but you just can't see it because the screen is blank. Try your monitor on another computer just to be sure...

 

I get no beeps when I turn it on. The monitor checks ou fine.

 

You need to check 3 things.

1.)Video Card

2.)Video Card

3.)Video Card



Everything is pointing to the video card

 

have you or can you borrow another p/supply to put in,no beeps generally indicate p/s or m/b
try resetting the cmos first

 

Thanks for the feedback. My curiosity brings another question tho. How do I know its the video card and not the CPU? If the card was bad, wouldn't it boot up with the standard drivers? Thanks

 

You have to either put that video card in another computer, or install a new video card in this computer.

 

No if the video card was toast you would boot without any display and there would be a series of long and short beeps. If your computer seems to be booting (fans spinning, drives active, etc) then perhaps it’s a checksum error try clearing CMOS and see if that clears up things for now. Then check the voltage reading on the CMOS battery if it’s less then 75% then replace it.

 

Well, I've made some progress of a sort. When all else fails, read the directions. I checked the MOBO manual and discovered there are diagnostic LED's on the USB bracket. Who knew? The LED's indicated a problem with the CPU either malfunctioning or not installed correctly. I re-seated the cpu and whaddaya know the computer booted right up. I can't imagine how it got unseated in the first place, but whatever. Unfortunately, the computer doesn't work today. It starts to boot normally, going past the Windows start-up screen and all until it gets to where background color appears. At that point before the icons show up, the screen goes black. It will complete the start-up in safe mode, yet the device manger doesn't show any problems. The other difference I noticed last night, playing SimCity is a lot of black dots(pixels?) that appear randomly on screen. If it was an LCD display, I'd think dead pixels. Today in safe mode I notice random patches of yellow in the device manager menu. Did I fry the graphic card?
Thinking ahead, if I did, what's the better choice, ATI or nVidia? Thanks

 

press f8 when booting up and from the options choose
last known good configuration

 

It's those dang Keebler elves... they do that stuff all the time

 

I saw the pointy shoes and hat, it should have been a dead giveaway. But the cookies were real good. I run Windows 98SE, no "last good configuration" option. Thanks

 

If you go back and re-read your original post, you had freezing/lock up problems and tried to clean out the machine - this could have been when the CPU got screwed up....

You've managed to get that straightened out, but it sounds like you're back to square one.

Sounds like it may be time for a clean install of Win98SE. This could serve two purposes: straighten out the lock ups, and more importantly, with a clean install, ensure that those lockups were due to software issues and not a potentially permanent hardware failure. (if on the clean/bare install you still have issues, could point you in hardware direction).

Just my two cents,

MBN