Unable to boot...

UnSeEn

UnSeEn

Mayor McCheese
Ok, late last night, my computer began to restart itself automatically. It would stay on the desktop for a while, and then reboot and go back to the desktop and reboot, etc. I got angry and went to bed. Early this morning, I awake and try to boot my computer, and it does very little. It:

- shows the "activity" light constantly
- every 2 seconds, the CD drive makes a click noise. It's the same click it makes when it boots.
- doesn't load at all, not even the screen.
- does absolutely nothing.

No matter what I did, the computer would not start and continually showed the symptoms I named above. And the funny thing is, it was working perfectly the previous day. Sure, I had recently picked up some spyware and was attempting to dispose of it, but nothing serious happened to lead up to this problem I have now.

The computer seems to be trying to boot, then gives up and tries again and again, never actually booting. And I can do very little about it, because it doesn't even boot enough to give me any BIOS or Windows options or anything. I don't get anything on my screen. I don't overtax it my computer, nor do I overclock it at all. My father and I took my computer apart, cleaned out all the dust, and began testing it piece by piece, but couldn't do anything about it. HELP!! It's my birthday soon, and I want to try out some new games, but without my PC, I'm stuck using my Dell laptop ~wretch wretch~. Thanks...
 
When you power up your PC, do all your fans start running like normal?
Also, Does your PC make any beeps at all?

Have you tried clearing the CMOS?:
Take out your motherboards battery for around 10 minutes, with everything powered off. And then insert it back into your mobo, and try booting up then.

Also can you post some specs, e.g. motherboard model, CPU, PSU, GPU etc

:D
 
Try to see if you can at least get into the BIOS. It's normally done by pressing delete a few times whilst it *should* be booting up, but different companies use different keys (I also think it has to be a PS/2 keyboard, not USB). If that fails, listen to see if there are any beeps, as these can usually be counted and translated into errors, telling you what is not working.
 
Firstly, yes, my fans run as normal: both my mobo fan and the fan on my video card. And as for beeps, not really. The only sounds are the sounds of the CD drive struggling to be booted, as it is one of the first boot devices. I cleared the CMOS by taking the pin and putting it in the 2-3 pins and back to the 1-2 pins, but it didn't help. I also took out the battery on the mobo (a nickel sized round battery) for a bit and used a multimeter to test to see if it had burned out. It seemed good...

And Thomas, I wish I could get into the BIOS...but it doesn't even let me get that far. The screen doesn't even boot up. I'm figuring right about now that it's the motherboard that's fried...unfortunate, but true. The video card seems ok, and I'm pretty sure the RAM is fine...we'll see, but I think that I'll just buy a new mobo, processor, and power supply (I'm in need anyway) and see how that works out. Thanks for the help.
 
Your optical drive seems very suspicous at the moment. Try removing the molex to it and see if it boots at all.
 
I'm thinking this is the good ole power supply kicking the bucket.

I've had this problem before, my optical drive kept making weird clicking sounds. Also, it would never boot far enough into windows.

Oh and as well, it was randomly restarting before it finally wouldn't boot. So I'd put good money its your PSU.

If I were you, don't try to do too much with it before you try a different PSU in there, better be safe.
 
PSU, eh? Damn...the only other one I have in this house that isn't being used was in a computer once home to a GeForce 2....and that was an upgrade! I doubt it would be able to support the power I need, but I can just disable the CD drives, et cetera and try the computer "bare bones" with the new power supply. I'll try that. Thanks!
 
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