Question Old PC from 2002 boots up, but monitor doesn't display anything ?

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mentor93

Jan 26, 2025
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I brought back from the attic my old PC that my parents bought back in 2002, together with Samsung monitor. I cleaned it (physically) inside and outside and tried to boot it up. The PC does boot up, but doesn't display anything. On the front of the case I can see HDD light is red which I figure might be the root cause of this problem.

The monitor itself definitely works as I have an old notebook from 2007 which has a VGA port. I plugged monitor into that notebook and it displayed everything nicely.

There was, of course, a lot of dust inside the PC. I got rid of it using compressed air, nothing seems to be broken when I look at motherboard, graphics card and other components, but I'm no hardware guy, so I can't tell with 100% certainty. I also couldn't find neither keyboard, nor mouse, but I don't think I should need them to just get my PC to show anything on the monitor?

I really don't know if I need a working HDD for BIOS to show up... I expected to see something, but since literally nothing is displayed and monitor definitely works, the issue might not just be with the HDD. Could you help me here, please? What can I check to be sure that it's HDD that's broken? Do I need to buy a new HDD or can I repair this old one?
 
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Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

I brought back from the attic my old PC that my parents bought back in 2002, together with Samsung monitor.
When posting a thread of troubleshooting nature, it's customary to include your full system's specs. Please list the specs to your build like so:
CPU:
CPU cooler:
Motherboard:
Ram:
SSD/HDD:
GPU:
PSU:
Chassis:
OS:
Monitor:
include the age of the PSU apart from it's make and model.

Moved thread from Storage section to Systems section.
 
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Can I add to what Lutfij requested. Pictures lots and lot of pictures.

Of motherboard. front of case, back of case. a shot of the power supply if you can of the label on the hard drive.

There might be something you don't see one of us will.

Also if this was a prebuilt. AKA Dell , HP , Gateway , and the model name.

Post pictures on imgur.com and than link here. :)
 
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old capacitors on old graphic cards can dry out or swell up and then the circuit will have the wrong voltage and not work.
generally they are good for at least 5 years. on old systems they are pretty easy to replace if you can not find a new card.

easy as in, desolder the old capacitors, and solder in new ones. Some capacitors you can look at them and see if they swelled up or leaked some brown fluid out of them.
you will be looking for electrolytic capacitors that failed.
google what they look like, and what the failures look like.
dried out ones you can not see the problem.

some monitors might have to manually switch modes to read a non default video format.
 
Last edited:
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mentor93 said:
I also couldn't find neither keyboard, nor mouse, but I don't think I should need them to just get my PC to show anything on the monitor?
Click to expand...
I seem to remember an option in some old BIOS marked "ignore keyboard error on startup" meaning the computer would continue the boot process, even if it failed to detect a keyboard. If this option isn't set, the computer will stop and wait until you connect a keyboard. If the GPU and screen are working, you'll usually see a message saying "keyboard missing". Even without a mouse or keyboard, I'd expect the screen to light up with POST messages.

Personally, I'd plug in a PS/2 keyboard and PS/2 mouse to give the BIOS a fighting chance of booting up from hard disk. If you don't have either of these items, search the second hand markets, eBay, or ask your local computer repair shop, if you have one nearby. If it's a really old computer (from the 1980s) it might have a 5-pin DIN keyboard plug and not a more "modern" 6-pin min-DIN PS/2 plug.

The photo below shows PS/2 mouse and keyboard sockets on a typical older motherboard. Note the colour coding.

iu


johnbl said:
old capacitors on old graphic cards can dry out or swell up
Click to expand...
Equally likely are swollen or burst electrolytics on the motherboard, especially around the VRMs (Voltage Regulator Modules). I've re-capped a number of old boards. A delicate process if you don't want to drag the plated through hole out with the capacitor leg.

I normally replace all capacitors of exactly the same size/value, when at least one of them has failed. It can take more than a hour of careful work with the correct tools and technique. Practice on an spare board before tackling a prized motherboard. It's easy to damage the PCB tracks.

In the photo below, the brown "goo" is the electrolyte which has leaked through the burst tops of the capacitors.

iu


If you have a GPU with bad caps, it's easier temporarily to swap it for a graphics card with good caps, to see if you can get the PC up and running.
 
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mentor93 said:
I also couldn't find neither keyboard, nor mouse, but I don't think I should need them to just get my PC to show anything on the monitor?
Click to expand...
Yes it should show a logo and some basic info and then complain about no keyboard being plugged in.

Look at if the mobo has an vga port and try to connect to that, if the bios is set up to show on the igpu(chipset) first it won't show anyhting connected to the gpu.
 
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mentor93 said:
I brought back from the attic my old PC that my parents bought back in 2002, together with Samsung monitor. I cleaned it (physically) inside and outside and tried to boot it up. The PC does boot up, but doesn't display anything. On the front of the case I can see HDD light is red which I figure might be the root cause of this problem.

The monitor itself definitely works. I have an old notebook from 2007 which still has a VGA port. I plugged monitor into that notebook and it displayed everything nicely.

There was, of course, a lot of dust inside PC. I got rid of it using compressed air, nothing seems to be broken when I look at motherboard, graphics card and other components, but I'm no hardware guy, so I can't tell with 100% certainty. I also couldn't find neither keyboard, nor mouse, but I don't think I should need them to just get my PC to show anything on the monitor?

I really don't know if I need a working HDD for BIOS to show up... I expected to see something, but since literally nothing is displayed and monitor definitely works, the issue might not just be with the HDD. Could you help me here, please? What can I check to be sure that it's HDD that's broken? Do I need to buy a new HDD or can I repair this old one?
Click to expand...
Unplug all discs and disk.....replace the bios bat....test.
 
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Sorry for the late reply. In the past weeks I've been replacing various parts of the PC, but nothing worked. I am still experiencing the issue where I power on my PC and it runs, but nothing is shown on the monitor.

Here's link to the photos:
https://imgur.com/a/eCiRJ7Q
View: https://imgur.com/a/eCiRJ7Q


Here are my current specs:
  • CPU: Intel Pentium 4 SL6DV 2.4GHz
  • CPU cooler: Intel C33218-003
  • Motherboard: ECS P4VXASD2+ REV 5.0 (478 socket)
  • Ram: Nanya 128MB DDR-266MHz CL2
  • HDD: Western Digital WD400BB 40 GB PATA 3.5''
  • GPU: 3G Graphic Nvidia GeForce 2 MX 400 64MB AGP
  • PSU: BanditPower HX-380 400W
  • Chassis: don't know
  • OS: at the moment none installed; I have WinXP on another HDD
  • Monitor: Samsung Samtron 76E

Following your advice I checked my old mobo and saw that some capacitors indeed have those bulging tops. I bought a replacement mobo, but it didn't fix the issue. So I bought replacement parts for everything else, except RAM and chassis. I bought CPU, CPU cooler, HDD, graphics card, PSU. Replaced all of them, but still the same issue.

Thinking it might be the monitor, I bought a VGA-to-HDMI cable and connected the PC to a HDMI monitor. Again, the same issue. The PC powers on, but nothing is shown on the monitor. I switched back to my CRT monitor.

There is no OS installed on HDD currently, but that shouldn't be the cause. In this case the PC should go to BIOS and I should see something on the screen.

I tried replacing CMOS battery twice, that didn't fix it. Just to be sure, I have a PS/2 keyboard and mouse plugged in.

As for RAM, I also tried placing various RAMs in various slots (you know, different combinations), but also nothing worked.

So to sum up, I pretty much have a completely "new" PC (because I replaced almost everything) which powers on, I can see CPU cooler running, everything seems fine, but there is nothing shown on the screen.
 
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mentor93 said:
Sorry for the late reply. In the past weeks I've been replacing various parts of the PC, but nothing worked. I am still experiencing the issue where I power on my PC and it runs, but nothing is shown on the monitor.

Here's link to the photos:
https://imgur.com/a/eCiRJ7Q
View: https://imgur.com/a/eCiRJ7Q


Here are my current specs:
  • CPU: Intel Pentium 4 SL6DV 2.4GHz
  • CPU cooler: Intel C33218-003
  • Motherboard: ECS P4VXASD2+ REV 5.0 (478 socket)
  • Ram: Nanya 128MB DDR-266MHz CL2
  • HDD: Western Digital WD400BB 40 GB PATA 3.5''
  • GPU: 3G Graphic Nvidia GeForce 2 MX 400 64MB AGP
  • PSU: BanditPower HX-380 400W
  • Chassis: don't know
  • OS: at the moment none installed; I have WinXP on another HDD
  • Monitor: Samsung Samtron 76E

Following your advice I checked my old mobo and saw that some capacitors indeed have those bulging tops. I bought a replacement mobo, but it didn't fix the issue. So I bought replacement parts for everything else, except RAM and chassis. I bought CPU, CPU cooler, HDD, graphics card, PSU. Replaced all of them, but still the same issue.

Thinking it might be the monitor, I bought a VGA-to-HDMI cable and connected the PC to a HDMI monitor. Again, the same issue. The PC powers on, but nothing is shown on the monitor. I switched back to my CRT monitor.

There is no OS installed on HDD currently, but that shouldn't be the cause. In this case the PC should go to BIOS and I should see something on the screen.

I tried replacing CMOS battery twice, that didn't fix it. Just to be sure, I have a PS/2 keyboard and mouse plugged in.

As for RAM, I also tried placing various RAMs in various slots (you know, different combinations), but also nothing worked.

So to sum up, I pretty much have a completely "new" PC (because I replaced almost everything) which powers on, I can see CPU cooler running, everything seems fine, but there is nothing shown on the screen.
Click to expand...
Do you have a case speaker? If not try to source one and see if it spits out any error codes
 
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Solid HDD light is usually floppy cable installed upside-down, grounding everything. While you appear to have an Alps Electric Co. FDD and this cable configuration would appear to be correct for it and board per both the other manuals (since the ECS manual is so low-resolution you can't make it out), nothing beats looking for pin1 and pin34 markings on both ends.

And a jumper on JP1 configures the motherboard for SDR operation, not DDR. 3 volts into DDR probably won't blow it up (it's a 20% overvolt) but then it may not work there either.

You have a supported 533MHz FSB processor in the 2.4B but have jumpered the board to operate at 400MHz (which is quad pumped so board is marked 133 or 100MHz, respectively). That should actually be fine but operate at 1.8GHz

We can't see if you have jumpered JBAT1 for CMOS Clr

P4X333 was supposed to be AGP 8x but it was broken, so is only 4x with 1.5v signaling. Most GeForce 2 MX 400 are keyed to operate at both 3.3v and 1.5v so should be OK.
 
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