(I’m posting this from a different computer- just to nip the “How are you posting if your screen is blank?” questions).
Basically- I was listening to music on my computer late last night, when I heard a loud pop/snap sound through the Headphones and my screen froze. I did a hard reset on the computer (as neither was responding for a while- mouse, or keyboard). When I restarted my computer made the noises to load up- but my screen was black. After a while I got the message “No video input to monitor” - yet nothing had really changed. I had unplugged replugged the monitor plug into the computer, but nothing changed.
Basically: I currently have a computer that powers up, a monitor that powers up. But when I plug the monitor into the computer- the monitor says there’s no input and after a while, it just goes to sleep. (I have an HP PC bought in 2003-2004 for those curious).
So, my questions:
-Based on the above data: Is it logical to say that my Video Card is the problem here?
What else could it be?
What should I do next? I certainly don’t have the skills/know how to open up the computer and replace such things. So do I just buy a new one and try to install it manually? Or should I go to a repair man? Or should I go to like Best Buy and have them install a new one?
I’m not sure if it’s necessarily the video card, I have odd issues overclocking (that I should make a thread about…) and something similar happens, it gets stuck before it even starts booting. It just sits there whirring idly, eventually the monitor gives up and sleeps. In my case I think it’s a voltage issue, probably not on yours, but I just wanted to say the video card isn’t necessarily the culprit (especially since the board usually has a rudimentary display built in that it defaults to).
It could be memory. Do something - turn on your computer and listen for “beeps” and tell us what they are, they should be easy to describe (i.e. “one long high pitched beep” or “a long beep and two short ones”) these are called “Beep Codes” and are used to detect hardware faults. We can make guesses even if we don’t know what you’re using, from what I’ve seen the codes don’t conflict too much. Of course, if you can remember what you used to see at boot that would be great too, for example mine says “Phoenix AWARD BIOS,” so if you remember what type you had that could help a little more.
And also, you really do have the expertise to install a new card unless you’re hilariously clumsy, nowadays it’s approximately as hard as “find part that looks like it, push in release tab and remove. Now insert new card in same slot.” It’s only slightly more complex than swapping floppy diskettes really.
Edit: Er, does it sound like it’s booting up, in other words keeps whirring and calming down and then sits idle after the bootup time or does it just sit there idle after you hit the power, not even trying (i.e. sounds idle like when you’re sitting there doing nothing on it)?
The fact that your computer made “noises to load up” doesn’t mean that the computer is working. Fans and disk drives will spin up even if the motherboard is toast.
How old is the computer and how much are you willing to spend on it?
>I certainly don’t have the skills/know how to open up the computer and replace such things. So do I just buy a new one and try to install it manually? Or should I go to a repair man?
If you dont have the skills to open the computer and replace it then you dont have the skills to install it yourself. I would go to a small mom and pop computer store before attempting to go to Best Buy or any repair shop associated with a large retail operation. More than likely they are the ones who will strongarm you into overspending.
Try to find one with a free diagnosis and estimate. Sometimes you can get this service and then you can decide if its worth buying a new one instead of going the repair route.
I’m afraid it sounds more like a failed motherboard than video card. When it’s been my video card that’s failed in the past, my hard drive would still “spin up”, but I could hear it grinding away as though it were actually loading the operating system and booting up, as opposed to just spinning as part of powering up and then stopping. The easiest way to tell would be to drop in a video card and see what happens, if you had an extra one (which you don’t seem to), and either knew how to do it or had a friend available would did (which you also don’t seem to).
I hope not, for your sake, because motherboard failures are a pain. I had to do this myself earlier this year with a similarly vintaged Dell computer. Like me, you probably won’t be able to get the same board you already have as it’s not made anymore, and newer ones use different CPUs and memory chips and maybe even hard drive connectors and video card slots, and would require an operating system reinstallation to get all the drivers right. You COULD get an identical refurb motherboard on eBay for the same price as a new, modern motherboard… But then again, once you’re going to the cost/trouble of doing a motherboard swap, why not upgrade in general? (Which is what I ended up doing)
One thing you might try though is to see if you’re a (non-fatal) victim of static electricity. To find out, unplug your PC from the wall, detaching both ends of the cord (from the wall socket AND from the back of the PC), then ground your PC. You remove the case, touch the metal frame under the plastic case with one hand and something like a radiator or another Big Metal Thingy Around Your House That’s Grounded with your other hand. You may or may not feel anything, but then replug it all in and see what happens.
-Okay. I’m going to try tonight to go back and turn on/off the computer to listen to the noises it makes. I only really noticed the Blue Light on it powers up, but didn’t really pay attention to the noises afterwords. I’ll try to record the noises, and come back tomorrow with the data.
-Alas, I do not have a spare monitor to try to use that. Though i did have a spare wire to a different monitor- I tried that one, but when I did that the screen was just black (so not even an “no input received” sort of comment. I’ll check that too.
Anything else I should try to do?
-I just hope my harddrive is still preserved. If I get a new PC, would they still be able to transfer the Data over, or should I pretty much assume that it’d be lost? That’s pretty much my greatest fear.
And I think I have enough technical know how to Open the computer at least and look at the insides. If it simply is an unplug/plug in replacement, I could probably do that.
And it’s a system that was bought new in 2003 or so, and I believe running Windows 2000. It had been doing just fine for all these years, not really slowed down or anything (though it was definitely showing it’s age…
Update: So I went and turned on my computer and listened to it. When I pushed the power button, the power light lit up, and it made a whirring noise- which seemed louder than normal. I Believe it’s the Fan, which when I checked the back- yeah- the fan is spinning away.
However, it made NO OTHER noises. I let it run for about 5-10 mins, and all that’s going on is the fan is just whirring away, but there’s no other noises present. The power light is on, and the CD drive is able to eject if I push the button.
But that’s all it is doing.
It isn’t your video card. Well, it might be, but you’ve got other problems. Your motherboard should give a single beep when it successfully passes POST. No beep at all means either the board is shot or the power supply is shot. If it was bad memory it would give a distinct beep pattern. Power supplies fail more often than motherboards do in my experience.
It’s simply a case of not having enough power, I think. I’m not really a hardware expert, but I think power supplies can degrade without having complete failure. There’s still a chance if you want to feel around inside for a tiny (probably red) button that resets the CMOS in case you (somehow) messed something up there by accident and ended up screwing with the voltage requirements. But if it just stopped working after normal use I doubt it will do much good.
Eh, it can, but it’s not likely. Sometimes if the power supply partially fails, you can tell what part died by what is working and what isn’t. Usually, hard drives use 12 volts for the motors and 5 volts for the logic, though a lot of them these days just use the 5 volts. The LEDs are usually activated by the motherboard, which mostly runs off of the 5 volt and 3.3 volt lines. The fans usually are powered off of the -12 volt rail, just to balance things out so that it has some sort of load. This is just generally speaking, though. There are exceptions. If you have one of these typical power configurations, you could lose only the 3.3 volt supply and everything except the motherboard would work.
It is much more likely that your CPU or motherboard is dead (or both - one may have killed the other when it went). On newer motherboards, if the CPU is fried you’ll still get beep codes. Systems of your era this didn’t always do this, though.
Even if the power supply was the initial failure, it could have easily killed the motherboard when it died.
A new power supply will cost you 30 bucks and isn’t likely to fix the problem. If you have to pay someone to put the power supply in, the labor charge will be more than your system is worth. A new motherboard will cost more than the system is worth, and would require you to upgrade to a new power supply anyway. There’s also a good chance it wouldn’t even fit in your system. The cost of a replacement motherboard, new CPU, memory, and a power supply if you buy them all as parts is pretty close to the cost of a new system.
Your best bet is to bite the bullet and get a new computer. I know that’s not what you want to hear, but really, it’s what you need to do. This thing ain’t worth fixing.
The first thing you’ll want to do for a mysterious hardware failure is to clear the CMOS. This is something you’ll have to consult your motherboard manual for most likely. This comes in the form of a set of 3 pins with a jumper that connects 2 pins. In order to clear the cmos, you disconnect the power supply from the wall and change the jumper to the opposite pin, so that it’s now connecting the middle pin with the previously unconnected one. Leave it like that for a minute - hitting the power button a few times can discharge any residual charge - and then switch the jumpers back to the original position. If you know the specific model of your computer, you may be able to find a manual online, and it will contain diagrams with the locations of this jumper.
If that doesn’t work, you’ll want to ascertain that you have a PC speaker/beep code speaker hooked up. Is there normally a single short beep about 5 seconds after you hit the power button on a normal boot?
If not, there will be a set of pins on the motherboard that say PWR/HDD/RESET SW/SPEAKER… at least they should be labelled. The motherboard manual should cover this too. You want to make sure that there’s actually a wire plugged into the SPEAKER part. Some cases don’t come with this anymore, which is frustrating. If not, you’ll need to acquire one on your own. I can help you find one at an online specialty shop for a few bucks if you need it… when I needed one I ripped it out of an old case.
If you can’t get beep codes - the most likely candidate is a broken motherboard, but not necesarily. My video card died recently under mysterious circumstances, and my motherboard did not properly give beep codes, which is weird because it’s a very high quality motherboard. I actually went through the steps of replacing the motherboard, only to find that the new one properly gave out beep codes, and indicated that it was a video failure.
Do you have any other computers available that are known to be working? The next step would be to swap out a compatable video card with yours and see if it works. A mom and pop repair shop will be able to do this easily, but I have no idea what they charge for the priviledge. Or you can do it yourself, it’s pretty simple and I’m sure there are step by step guides with pictures on the internet.
There’s a chance you may have integrated graphics on your system - I couldn’t tell you without knowing the motherboard - in which case you wouldn’t have a video card, and may not have a slot for a replacement. If that’s the case, you’d most likely need to replace the motherboard, although that’s not 100% sure to fix the problem.
I have a feeling this is probably going to be the route to go…
So my followup Q:
How can I save my harddrive/memory on the computer? I have documents and photos and all that stuff in the computer- is there any way to retrieve them and still keep them onto a new computer?
Like I wrote above. Open the case. Pull out the hard drive. Buy a USB enclosure. Put it in it. And plug the USB into the new computer. You’ll probably find you documents under c:\documents and settings\username\My Documents or Desktop
Also note there are two types of hard drive connectors: SATA and PATA/IDE. Take your drive to the computer store and ask someone to help you find the proper enclosure.
Don’t worry, this isn’t a big deal. Once you get the USB enclosure that everyone is talking about, the drive ends up being like a big floppy disk. You might take a while finding everything you were wanting, but its no big deal techwise.
Since it’s a 5 or 6 year old PC, buying a new one is most likely your best bet.
The problem is that a hard drive enclosure might cost ~$50. You might be able to just put the old PC’s hard drive in the new PC as a 2nd hard drive, depending on whether or not the new PC has IDE and SATA connectors, but that’s going to take just a tiny bit more technical expertise, a bit more than I’d be comfortable recommending to a newbie. There’s also the chance that you’ll need to set the BIOS to not try to boot off the old hard drive.
But I’m curious about something…
Did the music quit when you heard the pop? Or did it keep playing?
