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Registered Member #985
Joined: Thu Sept 06 2007, 04:21PM
Location: Phoenix, Arizona, USA
Posts: 12
ouch
is it a desktop or a laptop?
if it's a desktop, can you tell me if it will still post? (ei will BIOS come up either with an image of the computer manufacturer or the text based startup tests?) if so it could just be a hard drive issue, or a case of the OS needing to be reinstalled.. are there any error messages listed, ei "Cmos checksum error" or "missing operating system"?
do any of the fans inside the case spin up when you attempt to turn it on? are there any beeps? (if so, note the pattern<ei two long beeps, 3 short beeps, or perhaps a continuous long beep). if you do have spinning fans, there should be a "clear cmos" jumper on the motherboard that you might want to try.
or is it no fans, no nothing, dead? if so, all I can say is check out your power supply(and any fuses inside of it or attached to the receptacle on the back of the PSU) and look for visible damage to any electrolytic capacitors either in the PSU or on the motherboard.
since you don't have access, next time you see this, if your PC is a name brand or anything, grab the brand and model number on the back, if you built it yourself, then supply the motherboard make and model, the processor make and model, the graphics card make and model, the Power supply make and model, and the hard drive make and model.
also again, take notice of any beeping, or burned smell coming from the motherboard or power supply.
oh and one other thing, if you open up the case on your desktop and the PSU brand is L&C or Deer, then get another PSU and pray for the best...
if it's a laptop, then get the make and model, and we can go from there
also I am sorry if you have this knowledge already, just trying to help out. If you haven't yet delved into computer repair of any kind, please say so and I will explain things a bit more thorough and try to provide more easy to follow instructions.
I understand that it could be slightly difficult trying to figure out what happened when you have to troubleshoot in segmented steps, but anything I can do to get you back online and share repair knowledge in my spare time is probably a good thing, but the main thing is give me as many symptoms as possible, and I hope you will be able to print stuff out in case the procedures get difficult
Registered Member #985
Joined: Thu Sept 06 2007, 04:21PM
Location: Phoenix, Arizona, USA
Posts: 12
yeah, pop the case open, and look for the cmos reset jumper, it's usually a 2-3 pin jumper set next to a lithium button battery- if it's a 2 pin jumper, short it out with a screwdriver for a couple of seconds, if it's a 3 pin, move the jumper from one set of pins to the other for a few seconds, then move it back and start the computer.
also you might want to reinsert the video card if it's not integrated.
Registered Member #659
Joined: Fri Apr 20 2007, 09:14AM
Location: SW Hertfordshire, UK
Posts: 75
My one of my PCs packed up terminally a while back too, and the screen just kept going blank. Other than the fact the fact there is nothing on the screen, I think it is otherwise fine.
I think it's a short on the motherboard, simply because the old skool method of bashing it sometimes worked to solve the problem when it happened before, but that method unfortunately no longer works. And to make it more interesting, it won't work with most graphics cards.
The system was several years old at this point, so it wasn't any real loss to the world of computing, but I've still got to get around to recovering some old files off the hard disk.
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