PC won't boot up from ANYTHING?

[jdaniel 125]

hello

I'm trying to fix up my grandparents old custom built socket AM3 machine that they gave to me, but I can't...

I've already formatted and defragmented the custom built's hard drive in my main PC, then I took it out of my main PC and put it back in the custom built, when the computer goes through the POST tests, the next screen is just a blinking cursor, that's it, I set the boot order to the DVD drive and I tried a Windows PE DVD with no scratches, a Windows 8.1 USB drive and a Windows 7 installation disk, the computer still had a blinking cursor even though both of the USB and DVD worked perfectly in my other PC

I have to reset the computer 8 times to get it to work, and when it finally starts working, I can boot up from the DVD or USB, but then it just freezes at a black screen, nothing at all, no "Windows is loading files..."

I'm suspecting that this might be a hard drive issue even though it's recognized in the BIOS. can someone help? I really don't want to throw out this PC since its upgradeable to a 6 core AMD phenom II and 8 GB of RAM.

 

[jsmithepa]

Remove any GPU and boot from onboard video.

Step1: Can you get into BIOS?
Step2: Remove everything, HDD, RAM, all expansion cards, try to boot into BIOS.

 

[jdaniel 125]

I can boot into the BIOS fine with the hard drive, but I'll try without it soon. I have no expansion cards either.

 

[jdaniel 125]

I unplugged both the DVD drive and HDD, the computer then told me to insert a bootable media and press any key to continue, I reset the computer to see if the same screen would show up. AND THEN THE CURSOR APPEARED AGAIN. So I shut off the computer, plugged in the DVD and HDD drive, and the flashing cursor appeared again... I don't get it! The DVD drive reads and writes CD's in my custom built just fine, and the hard drive is also fine because when I selected it in the boot menu of my custom built, it said "no
OS found." That means my custom built successfully read off of it. I'm really stumped here...

 

[jdaniel 125]

I've reset the CMOS, booted with one stick of RAM, held down the power button for 30 seconds. And it still won't work... I got it to boot up once, it then said "Press any key to boot off of DVD or CD" I hit a random key, then a black screen appeared and that was it, no "windows is loading files", or a flashing DVD drive light.

 

[jsmithepa]

See drives under BIOS (basic hardware recognition)? If no, then something wrong with SATA ports.
Attempt update Mobo's BIOS.
Attempt to Boot from a bootable Flash.

 

[jdaniel 125]

The hard drive is recognized in the BIOS, and the BIOS already has the latest updates, but I can't boot from a bootable flash drive.

 

[jdaniel 125]

THANK YOU! It turns out that all I had to do was swap the SATA cables around, and it started working!