Ok need some help

[Lebeau]

My main computer is screwed up now. For the last week, it would freeze up at some inconvenient time, usually when idling. After the freeze up, it would refuse to turn on. It's getting power, the lights on the CDRoms light up, the fan turns on, but beyond that, nothing. No monitor display. No lights from the keyboard or mouse. Eventually the computer would finally turn on only to freeze again hours later. Well, last night it froze again and it's still not coming on yet. I have tried swapping hard drives and that seems to have no effect. I have a few more things to try to figure out just what te problem might be, but I thought I'd run it by you guys and see if anyone has a thought. Fortunately, I'm on my third computer, the laptop now, so I'm not totally disabled!

[Rosuav]

There's a few possible causes here. Brainstorming for a moment for solutions...

1. It could be heat related. Do you have a fan on top of your CPU, and if so, is it running properly? Unscrew the lid of your computer, open it up, and see if you sneeze as if you've caught your death of cold. If your PC is full of dust, it can overheat.

2. You might have sustained damage to the motherboard (oh, sorry, "main board" in these politically correct days). If there's some sort of flaky connection, you're going to have mighty trouble doing anything.

3. Perhaps your power supply is on the blink. If it's not supplying sufficient power to crucial components, that might give the symptoms you described.

So... solutions.

1. Open up your computer, clean it out if you can (don't use a vacuum cleaner unless you're very careful). Find the fan on top of the CPU - it should be fairly obvious. If it's not turning, or if it's turning at only a low speed, or jerkily, it may need replacing.

2. Leave this one for now, it's hard to get it tested. But if all else fails, this might be the cause. It's probably not worth trying to fix the motherboard; take your whole computer to an expert.

3. This is a bit easier to tinker with, but take care - power supplies have full 240v current chugging through. So don't open it up... but you can replace it as a complete unit. If you borrow a working power supply from a working computer, you can plug that in and see how it goes. There's a lot to plug in and out; the most important thing is the motherboard's power, a wide plug with a good number of wires in it. If you leave a few drives and such unplugged, it won't stop you from booting (but it will stop you from using those drives).

Note that if you're going to unplug and plug in a lot of power cables, as you would if you replace the power supply, you may want to invest in some steel fingers. They're pretty stiff sometimes.

[Lebeau]

Great... I've already thought of all those.

1. Fan is good.

2. I hope not. I'm trying to eliminate all possibilities beyond the motherboard.

3. I think the power supply is good. The CD Roms are definitely getting power as is the fan. The main power supply appears to be good. The power lines to the hard drives may or may not be good. My wife says she tried swapping internal power lines to no avail. But then again, like you said, it wouldn't stop the computer from booting up.

It sounds to me like a motherboard problem. I can't afford to get the computer looked at professionally yet. Maybe I can get the computer experts from the unit?

[Rosuav]

Originally posted by Lebeau
Great... I've already thought of all those.
3. I think the power supply is good. The CD Roms are definitely getting power as is the fan. The main power supply appears to be good. The power lines to the hard drives may or may not be good. My wife says she tried swapping internal power lines to no avail. But then again, like you said, it wouldn't stop the computer from booting up.

It sounds to me like a motherboard problem. I can't afford to get the computer looked at professionally yet. Maybe I can get the computer experts from the unit?

The power supply might not be totally dead (were it, you'd get absolutely nothing), but for some reason it might not be offering enough power to the components. Ooh... Check on the back, it IS running at the right input voltage isn't it?

One thing that is REALLY dodgy, and which may not be worth trying, but can be a lot of fun too (!), is to get two computers side by side, and plug components from one into the other one's power supply. That is, any component that DodgyPC can't power, you run a cable to it from WorkingPC.

[kyilm]

Definatly possible that your Power Supply is over heating .. and you cant turn it on cause it needs to cool down ... try getting a normal desktop fan and putting it directly next to the powersupply to cool it down.
The above happened to me not so long ago. After working it out I replaced the Power Supply and was fine from then on.
What would be useful is if you went into the Event Viewer .. start --> control panel --> admin tools --> event viewer .. and checked to see if there were errors around the time it crashes. If there are you could pm them to me and I'll see if they mean anything inparticular.

So many things can cause this but a heat issue sounds most likely in this case.

Kyilm

[Zephora]

I actually encountered this problem with my own computer not too long ago. After about a zillion hours, a friend and I concluded that it was my cd drive. I don't remember the exact specifics of what the problem was, but my cd rom was acting as a slave drive, and burnt out my whole computer, it would just freeze, would turn on, but nothing would happen, seemed like everything was running, but nothing was happening. When I finally got it to work, maybe an hour or three would go by and then the computer froze. After removing the cd drive, it didn't happen again. Seemed that was what needed replacing. Don't know if that will help or not, but anythings worth a try, especially with hours of aggravation .

[Lebeau]

Actually it was dirty. I had to disassemble the whole computer including the power supply and take a baby toothbrush to it. After three hours of cleaning and reassembling the computer and another hour of sneezing, I haven't had a problem with it! I'm still planning on upgrading the CPU and motherboard anyway. Thanks!

[Nazon]

Next time use air compressor to just blow the dust from your computer (in a garage or another open area, of course). It's a good safe and fast method to clean all electronics.