[SOLVED] Bringing back to life an Acer Aspire E380 PC

[ZKearns]

Hello everyone! I have an Acer Aspire E380 desktop with Windows Vista which I purchased brand new in 2007. I got into computer gaming for a few years but completely stopped and ended up putting this pc away in the closet which was around 2010. With that said I don’t think I’ve turned on this computer for about 10 years lol. I just pulled it out, opened the tower and used an air compressor to blow out the dust ( which I realized I did a <Mod Edit> job, especially on the fans ), plugged her up and turned her on. The first 2 times I tried to turn it on it made a noise for a split second and stopped. I re plugged the power cable and it turned on the 3rd try. I bought a new power cable before setting it up because I lost the original. So the first problem is my hp hpx20led monitor turns on and had a blue light but shows a no signal screen for a second and then goes black and the blue light turns yellow. I’m using VGA btw. I then remembered that in 2008 or 2009 I upgraded the graphics card to an NVidia that cost about $100 at that time. I don’t know the exact model because it’s not in the PC anymore! Lol and I don’t remember what happened but I know i used it for a while. This pc uses a video card that’s already on the motherboard btw. So I’m thinking that maybe there’s a driver or setting issue? I’m connected to the VGA input that connects to the mother board but maybe the BIOS or whatever is set to the upgraded? Anyways while looking through the tower and realizing the upgraded NVidia video card isn’t even installed anymore the heatsink fan fell off and it was burning hot! I was looking trough the tower while the pc was running btw. Before it fell I noticed it’s fan wasn’t running unless i gave it a push. I don’t know for sure but I then had a memory of having a power supply problem and that’s why I put the computer in the closet for 10 years (I’m not 100% on if there was a power supply problem). Considering I upgraded a graphics card without upgrading the power supply maybe if there is a power supply problem then that’s how that happened? Anyways, I haven’t used a pc or even a laptop for the past 10 years and have forgotten all the knowledge I had about computers. Running in safe mode, what BIOS is, drivers, everything. I’m basically a full blown noob again. So the questions are what do I do at this point to get this thing working again? Could I not have any monitor signal because of a driver or BIOS issue because of switched video cards? How can I check to see if there’s a power suppply or cooling problem? Is it possible that my computer could have fried up while setting it back up, virtually destroying everything stored on there? I want to use this pc for playing chess online and maybe playing an mmorpg called ragnarok online and which this pc in original parts can easily run. I don’t mind investing a couple hundred for replacement parts. Or is building from scratch a better option? Can I build something medium quality for around $500? Below or some pictures of the pc in its current state.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/dj20ikcnmc3ofc0/AACG81N9KQWUmx0OXvXJ2EMEa?dl=0

 

[mdd1963]

The AthlonX64 X2 of whatever speed they claim (i.e, 6400+ but likely only 2000-2500 MHz or so) is probably going to be too slow for Win10, and, likely will not accept more than 2-4 GB of RAM anyway (DDR2 at best?)...

I'd probably not bother with any aspirations of planning on playing anything game-wise on Win10 for this rig...

If you want to try at least getting an image from it, and perhaps tinker with a low-resource Linux distro on it, you can pull the BIOS battery for 10 minutes and reinsert it, or, consider just replacing it as it has been powered off 10 years and is possibly dead anyway...

Beyond that, you will need a known good PSU to any further. (I'd get one worthy of your next rig if you intend to build it yourself; if it does not fix this rig, you at least have a PSU for your next rig.) I'd be hesitant to recommend contemplating getting spending any more money on parts trying to get it up and running considering it's age/vintage.