PC doesn't boot anymore

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chrisbrown

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Dec 16, 2004
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Hiya, I'm at my wits end and could do with some help on this one.

I decided to swap out my old heatsink and replace it with an arctic freezer pro, and whilst i was at it i unplugged everything, moved the harddrive down a couple of spaces, tidied up my wiring and put an extra dvd-rom drive in. I plugged everything back in - admittantly forgetting the auxiliary 12v connector at first - and powered up.

Everything comes on, psu, case fans, cpu fan and my graphics card fan stays at 100%, but there is no signal - just a black screen - and the harddrive light stays on constantly. I can hear the harddrive spin so it is getting power, and the mobo LED is on so that's getting power too. There are no beeps though.

I've reconnected everything and checked and there doesn't seem to be anything unplugged, and i've tried my other sata cables in different sata sockets on the motherboard.

Specs:

Asus a8n-e
Athlon 3200+ venice
Corsiar Value Select 2gb (2x1Gb sticks)
ATI radeon x1800xt 256mb
Seagate 7200.9 250Gb SATA2 harddrive
Hiper type-R 480w PSU
LG GDR-8164BL DVD-rom drive
LiteOn SHM-165P6S DVD-RW drive
generic floppy drive

Nothing is overclocked and i built it myself, and haven't had any problems 'til today. Cheers guys.
 
Usually if it is a ram or video card error you will get a series of beeps... if it's not one of those you can't even get a POST started so...

Did you accidentally knock the cpu out of it's socket when putting the new hsf on?

Do you have the extra 6 pin connector to the video card?

Have you tried clearing CMOS by removing the battery and moving the jumper from 1-2 to 2-3 for 2 min?
 
6 pin connector is in the gpu and i don't see any reason why the cpu was knocked out. I didnt really wanna have to take off the hsf but i'll have a check.

I've just tired the old IDE hard drive out of this pc to no luck. I don't get to the BIOS screen with either drives.

I've tried resetting the CMOS and that hasn't done anything either :?
 
I don't know why, but I've done the same thing and wigged out about it. But you may want to just remove everything in your system and rebuild slowly.
It worked for a few times. Take out the mobo and all, verify no metal objects are jammed behind the back plane. Re-seat the CMOS battery, CPU, FAN an what not. Try installing the old cooler again, perhaps it shorting out the system.

If none of that works for you, static could be your problem here. You can verify components one by one at a local shop (or someone with familiar build) if they're are cool people. If they charge you 5 bucks for diags, then its nice to 25 buck to know whats not working is worth it. Good luck, I've been there.
 
You may have damaged your motherboard unknowingly while installing the heatsink. You did say you unplugged everything and added a heatsink and DVD drive. You moved things around, wiring etc. The problem lies there within someplace.
 
I had the same problem when I moved to water cooling... all I did was take it all apart and put it back together again... worked fine.

Sometimes it's just that one pin in the slot that isn't making good contact...
 
tidied up my wiring and put an extra dvd-rom drive in
Click to expand...

Did you set the jumpers correctly? If you have two masters or two slave devices on the same controller this could cause a black screen. (Video but no POST data) The bios will echo the devices detected after RAM and the Video card are initialized. I have seen people go nuts to find they forgot to set the jumpers or put the drive on the wrong controller by mistake.

I would simply remove the "extra" dvd-rom and have a go at it. See what happens... :idea:
 
I agree. Here is a crazy idea, but reseat your RAM. I work Tech support and most of the time ive got a customer on the the phone and this happens, they inadvertently hit the memory and it came unseated a little bit. Then the computer will not turn on at all. Most mobo's will not turn on and get to the bios screen if you have no memory on the system. My asus board does that.
 
Thanks for all the replies, it's much appreciated. I've got everything out now, so i'll just try putting everything back in without the added drive and see what happens. I remember some tiny metal filings falling out as i took out my hard drive the first time, so hopefully i haven't shorted anything.
 
ALYARBANK said:

>>>>Did you set the jumpers correctly? If you have two masters or two slave devices on the same controller this could cause a black screen. (Video but no POST data) The bios will echo the devices detected after RAM and the Video card are initialized. I have seen people go nuts to find they forgot to set the jumpers or put the drive on the wrong controller by mistake.

I would simply remove the "extra" dvd-rom and have a go at it. See what happens... <<<

Excellent! Let everyone know if this is the answer. If it's not get a Conroe.
 
I agree. Here is a crazy idea, but reseat your RAM. I work Tech support and most of the time ive got a customer on the the phone and this happens, they inadvertently hit the memory and it came unseated a little bit. Then the computer will not turn on at all. Most mobo's will not turn on and get to the bios screen if you have no memory on the system. My asus board does that.
Click to expand...

Excellent too! Statistically speaking, RAM is the cause of 'unknown computer behavior'' 100% of the time. It's like Rod Sterling takes control of your computer.
 
huzzar! it's fixed, in fact im typing from it now 😀 thanks for all your help, i just tried everything everyone said at the same time and it seemed to work. The only problem is is it now wont boot to windows with the new drive hooked up. There are no jumpers that need to be set as i've set up a master and a slave before with the same DVD-RW but a different DVD-ROM.

The one time it did boot to windows i had a look in the device manager and instead of having two seperate "LITE-ON DVD-RW SHM-165P6S" and "LG GDR-8164BL" there is only one drive listed which is composed of a mixture of the two drive names, and is only recognised as a generic CD-ROM drive :?
 
huzzar! it's fixed, in fact im typing from it now 😀 thanks for all your help, i just tried everything everyone said at the same time and it seemed to work. The only problem is is it now wont boot to windows with the new drive hooked up. There are no jumpers that need to be set as i've set up a master and a slave before with the same DVD-RW but a different DVD-ROM.

The one time it did boot to windows i had a look in the device manager and instead of having two seperate "LITE-ON DVD-RW SHM-165P6S" and "LG GDR-8164BL" there is only one drive listed which is composed of a mixture of the two drive names, and is only recognised as a generic CD-ROM drive :?
Click to expand...

Hooray! Whatever is preventing you from booting into windows take it off! LOL! I just spent a couple of hours getting on line with VISTA BETA 2 today. The problem started when I installed an ATI video driver. I went round and round with it. But I managed to strangle it, get it a compromised position and hammer it home. So I'm good to go with this Vista creme dela creme. Ready for some lunch about now.
 
Blimey lunch? i'm all but ready for bed here! Will vista be worth the upgrade do you reckon then?

I've disconnected the LG drive and it boots fine, i'm just not sure how to have it connected and have windows working. I expected a new drive to work if i can run a slave with four year old samsung!
 
Try putting all the hdd's on s-ata and using the primary and secondary ide for each optical drive.... ie one drive on primary the other on secondary. This might remove the conflict.
 
Blimey lunch? i'm all but ready for bed here! Will vista be worth the upgrade do you reckon then?

I've disconnected the LG drive and it boots fine, i'm just not sure how to have it connected and have windows working. I expected a new drive to work if i can run a slave with four year old samsung!
Click to expand...

I didn't see where you said you set the jumpers on the slave dvd drive? If you configure two drive on the same IDE cable, the first is set to master and the second drive's jumper on the back of the unit must be set to slave.

Windows VISTA BETA 2 is pain. I've installed it and run it several times for a day or so, but I may leave it on this mahine for a while and mess with it. I get to use Internet explorer 7 anyways. Drivers have been a bit of a hassle. Here's my specs:

AMD Athlon 3200 Socket A 2.1 32 bit CPU
ASUS Deluxe Ultra 400 MB
Corsair XMS PC3200 512 x 2
ATI Radeon 9200
WD 80 IDE HDD
Aspire 500w PSU

This rig runs it fine. Takes half the RAM installed to support this BETA version. No wonder the newer, better DDR2 is out there to be had. I'd call this OS RAM hungry if anything else. I should be Vista efficient in about a week.
 
Ahh i forgot all about the jumpers on the back of the drives, i was looking all around by the IDE sockets! Everything's working A-ok now so i'm quite chuffed.

I suppose using 512Mb of ram isn't tooo bad, i was getting a bit worried with the talk of motherboards capable of holding 8 and 16Gb of ram. Saying that though i can;t see me upgrading to vista anytime soon once it comes out - bit of a cash strapped student!
 
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