[Gary Bagshawe]

Ok guys n gals, im writing this on my laptop as my main tower has decided to stop working. I usually leave it on all day and when I went to turn it off last night the screen was blank.
the monitor is fine as I unplugged it from pc and it lit up with no signal message.
Switched pc off and back on, no beep and the lights came on for a few seconds then went off. Fans and whirry things all whiring and ***** like but nothing to screen. I know that windows isn't loading as I switched speakers on and no sounds at all.
I have checked and re-seated the memory still nowt.
Can anybody confirm that it is knackered for me please, im sure it is.

[fionaB]

possibly eiher your hard drive or motherboard??

how many mem sticks have you got if more than one try taking out one at a time to see if it works then? unlikely that two mem sticks have gone at the same time and there should be enough in one to boot up yer pc i would have thought

no expert tho! lol

fiona

[Steve]

If you switch it on are you getting any 'post beeps' from the pc right at the very beginning?

Edit just re-read...sounds to me like a possible Motherboard or cpu problem rather than hd if you are getting no beeps at all.

Can you (safely) open it up and check to see if the fan on the CPU starts spinning when you first power it on?

[orangepeel]

if you usually get a beep (from the motherboard) after you switch on and it's now silent then that can be indicative of a mobo issue.

It's probably the mobo but it's much easier to check the PSU first. You can do that by buying a replacement - or get hold of someone elses to test. I've seen faulty power supplies that still power up fans and drives but not the motherboard.

Checking the mobo involves removing the heatsink & processor. For that you'll need thermal compound and iso cleaner before you put the heatsink back in place.

[Gary Bagshawe]

Cheers all for the advice, I thought it was the motherboard myself, and as I go into hospital tomorrow I think ill just use the laptop for now, oh the smug feeling of having backed up all images to disk except for 10 recent ones. Guess I best start looking at prices of bits to build a new one.

[Nathan]

If you take the side off of the case, the mobo normally has a tell tale LED on it. If it's getting power through the ATX connector on the mother board this WILL be illuminated. They sometimes also flash a few times at startup as another means of indication a fault.

The thing to remember with a PSU is that they normally go at times of high stress, ie start up!

If you can see an LED and it's not illuminated then I'd suggest one of the coils in the PSU has gone - any smell from this?

There are loads of things that can cause this to be honest:

The mobo shorting on the case.
CPU overheating
Badly seated RAM

However these don't normally happen to a machine that's been running perfectly well.

Do the fan's continue to spin? In particular the CPU cooler fan?

[Gary Bagshawe]

All fans running fine no smell.

[lolyton]

If you get another and want it running 24/7 then a mac is designed for it, and will be your best friend for longer!

I'm gonna get in trouble for that, the PC guys jump on that sort of thing (best point out i have both and so far my mac is still going and i'm now on my 2nd PC).

[abirkill]

Originally Posted by lolyton

If you get another and want it running 24/7 then a mac is designed for it, and will be your best friend for longer!

I'm gonna get in trouble for that, the PC guys jump on that sort of thing

I think the Linux guys might jump on it too...

[orangepeel]

Originally Posted by abirkill

I think the Linux guys might jump on it too...

or anyone with more sense than money