What's dead?

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt (More info?)

Abit BX2r
Intel PIII 500 mhz cpu
Generic psu 250

I use this computer just once in a while. Had it on yesterday, left
it on, went off for a few hours, came back and found the harddrive
light blazing away. It's on a kvm switch, could not get any video,
tried to reboot with reboot button - nothing. Tried to turn off with
button in front - nothing. Had to toggle the power switch in back
off. Have to use that switch to turn it back on, but only get fans and
lights to CD, front power button and reboot button. Have opened it up
and tried a different video card - no go.
Have never had this happen before. Assume mb? as the hard drive does
not power up and no beeps. Any help will be appreciated as to where
to go from here. TIA Rob

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt (More info?)

"RA" <notmyaddy@mailinator.com> wrote in message
news:071ef090mmb1c7lcn2qpi7dc2se63sdec8@4ax.com...
> Abit BX2r
> Intel PIII 500 mhz cpu
> Generic psu 250
>
> I use this computer just once in a while. Had it on yesterday, left
> it on, went off for a few hours, came back and found the harddrive
> light blazing away. It's on a kvm switch, could not get any video,
> tried to reboot with reboot button - nothing. Tried to turn off with
> button in front - nothing. Had to toggle the power switch in back
> off. Have to use that switch to turn it back on, but only get fans and
> lights to CD, front power button and reboot button. Have opened it up
> and tried a different video card - no go.
> Have never had this happen before. Assume mb? as the hard drive does
> not power up and no beeps. Any help will be appreciated as to where
> to go from here. TIA Rob

Not enough information to troubleshoot. But the two most frequent failures
in an older PC like that are the power supply and floppy drive, in that
order. There are many ways a power supply can fail and still cause some
activity (lights, fans) If the computer isn't POSTing, that tells me that
the CPU either isn't getting good power, or the CPU or motherboard is
defective. I know that isn't much help, but it's a place to start. The
odds are your power supply just failed. Start there, as anything else would
be expensive. I hope you have a spare power supply sitting around. If not,
buy one. If it's something other than the power supply, you are going to
end up building most of a complete new system (to replace mainboard or CPU
would likely involve mainboard, CPU and power supply, as a minimum), so you
will need the new power supply anyway. -Dave