Hello, My computer is doing some very special things!! When I press the on button all the fans start up, the lights on the case light up but that's about it!! Power is getting to the motherboard as the Standby light is on, but the Hard drive doesn't spin or make any noise, the CD-rom won't open up! If I take the RAM out and power up it doesn't beep - so it probably doesn't get as far as looking for RAM. I have tried to clear the CMOS but it doesn't help. Nothing comes up on screen - in fact the computer doesn't tell the screen to come off standby. Its bizarre as I haven't added any hardware or software and the computer was working fine. It is a Pentium 4 2.8 scoket 478 motherboard is ASUS P4R800-VM. 512mb ram, 120gb Seagate Ultra ATA HDD. Its almost like it doesn't know its a computer anymore! Some people have told me that the motherboard is fried others say the cpu chip may be knackered, but they are no experts and are just guessing like me. Any help would be great!! Also, if the motherboard/cpu are fried and I need to replace them, will my HDD that has windows etc.. on it still work if the motherboard and/or cpu are not identical to the ones that were there originally? Cheers for any help you can offer! Dave.
OS is win XP Pro PSU is 280W bog standard power unit that came with the computer. I did try the power unit from my other computer with the same results, and I know that that one does work.
try this, also 280W is not very powerful (i have a Tagan 330W, but i am using old hardware) this PSU kicks ass Antec TP2 i think that is your problem, PC cases usually do come with underpowered PSU´s, the amount of Wattage should only ever be used as a very inacurate guide, PSU´s are a common cause of problems, Big B it Da man when it comes to PSU - check out his Sticky
Thanks for your help, its made me have another play with it! I don't think its the PSU as the other one I tried in there is a 400W unit and it had the same malfunctions. I did unplug the IDE cables for the HDD, Floppy drive and CD rom, funnily enough by doing this it meant that power got to the CDrom to open and close the drawer and by feeling the HDD it did start to cycle. Whereas before both were powerless! Does this hint towards the fact that my motherboard is totalled?? If so will it be okay to stick another one in there and boot up from the same HDD with Windows without formatting it, etc...???? Cheers.
this just backs up what i said, cos you´ve reduced the power drain on the PSU and again PSU´s wattage is not to be relyed upon cos when you strip a PSU down, differerent parts of the PSU (called rails) allow only a certain amount of power to be drawn from the PSU, e.g. some PSU´s with a wattage of 400W are better than some rated over 500W, and you also said: if you replace the mobo XP will probably need at least reactivating, but yeah in some cases you may need to format & reinstall XP
u will have to reformat as u will get BSOD's, i havent tried a repair but it may aswell work, try a repair first if u dont have another way of getting ur data off.
