I dont have much experience with the "guts" of computers, so i didnt really know what to do.
My grandparents have a pc that wont start. But, its doing the weirdest thing i have ever seen. When u plug it in the power light shows orange instead of green and the fan comes on. The CD drive opens, the hd isnt starting and the monitor just stays at a self test screen.
I think the mobo or hd failed, but if the hd failed then how come im not even getting a boot screen or anything. Most pcs will scan the a: drive first, but i get nothing. The cd drive seems to scan the disk but then does nothing. Tried boot disks, tried sys restore cds, tried F8, but the power button wont respond, it turns on/off by plug in onlu and the pc does nothing.
They did tell me before it went up that it shut down randomly, gave weird boot options, etc.
What is wrong with it, it is only 3-4yrs old?
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:jd: wow. this is just what one my my computers did. The hd made no sound, no *wur* that it is running, but all the fans came on and the CD drive opened. Wierd bugger.
I never found out what was wrong, even my Dad, who is really good at fixing computers, did not know what was wrong with it. Bummer.
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he said it was stuck at monitor self test. means there is no video output from the PC. with the random shutdowns prior to death i might hazzard a guess that it might be CPU. it might be the motherboard but without a CPU bios wont load.
was it noiser than usual while it was randomly shutting down? it might have been the heatsink fan stopping and the cpu overheating. Spunker, do you know someone who is good with the "guts" of computers? unfortunately when a problem is this bad it is usually a case of swapping things in and out.to see if it boots. if the system is 4 years old then a newer system might not be a bad idea. it might be cheaper than trying to fix an older system. if the mobo/cpu did die then the HDD should be ok so you should be able to put it in another computer to get the data off.
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Da. The computer starts up ok. You are just unable to see it on the monitor??? I guess you either pressed the menu button on the monitor. I'd try plugging a different monitor into the back and starting it up should boot right up.
Da. The computer starts up ok. You are just unable to see it on the monitor??? I guess you either pressed the menu button on the monitor. I'd try plugging a different monitor into the back and starting it up should boot right up.
No, that was the first thing i looked for. Its all hooked up fine, and i get no bios or anything. Plus its really quiet like there is no hd spinning. Only the fan is going.
I tried opening the case to look for visible damage. I saw none, and it was pretty clean inside.
BTW, they hardly ever use their pc, but it was a cheap emachines, so that could be why it went up.
I have a gateway that is 10yrs old, all original parts inside, added ram, pci cards, and this thing still runs fine. Its very slow though, but useable. Heck, it even got struck by lighting in 1999. All that was ruined was the 56k modem. Hows that for quality?
Probably motherboard, possibly CPU. Check that everything is pushed in correctly, such as RAM, reseat that and the CPU.
Same thing happened to me, except that it just blinked orange, couldn't turn on or off. Perfect reason for me to get a new computer :)
Not much of a hardware genius, but i popped open the case to check to see if everything was in order. Nothing looked burnt up, everything was in place, and it was one of the cleanest computers ive seen inside. Unless somebody else took a look at it before i did. B/c as i said above this is my grandparents computer, not mine.
Ksong12, that is exactly what this thing does. As soon as you add power it goes to an orange light, where the regular green power indicator should be. And the button to turn it on/off is useless.
Seeing that this was a low end pc back then, and since i didnt pick it out for them b4, its got bad specs and isnt worth it to fix. (It has only 256mb ram and a celeron- never checked the Ghz but a p3 could do just as good )
So i told em it would be easier to get a new pc, probably a dell vostro or something that u can still get xp on, b/c they arent very good with tech, and the last thing i want to do is give them vista.
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damn straightstay away from vista for now stay with XP if thats what they know. there are plenty of good deals out there . my wife just bought an ACER for AUD$100 including monitor. P4/celeron 2 ish gig ,nearly 1 gig of ram. been running for 3 months straight now.got it from e-bay local pickup so it is cheap. works just fine for what she needs. check if you have a local computer fair. we do once a month and some vendors sell ex gov/buisness pc at really good prices.
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Yep, I got a new computer as well. I had a 256 MB RAM, 2.4 GHZ P4, Dell Dimension 2400.
I got myself a spanking new quad core machine with 4GB of RAM. And it only cost me $680! And it is on Vista and running great, thank you.
Whats wrong with a 2400? I got one its a 2.8ghz p4, came with 256mb ram, upgraded it a while ago and it runs like a beast. I think the p4 is just as good as the core2 processors.
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For my purposes, they are most definately not the same, hehe. I upgraded to 1GB, of RAM, but that is the max that the 2400 motherboard supports. Not good enough for me.
I do a lot of video editing, and a P4 doesn't even come close. Before, I rendered at about 20 frames per second, now I am chugging along at about 100-120 frames per second. Even though I upgraded my graphics card, the 2400 can barely handle a game like Halo, let alone Crysis, or any modern game that my new rig and just plow through. An upgrade from 40GB (default on 2400; I upped mine to 80 GB later), to a nice 1TB doesn't hurt either, nor does 5.1 surround sound!
(Oh, and it's got water cooling :))
Not saying that the 2400 is a bad machine; its a good one! It led me through 5 years, but its just getting too old for today's world and what I do.
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I got one its a 2.8ghz p4, came with 256mb ram, upgraded it a while ago and it runs like a beast. I think the p4 is just as good as the core2 processors.
