PC trouobleshooting

[maj Andres]

So I turn on my PC and I get nothing but a blank screen. I dusted it all out and the same still remains. I can feel both of the hard drives spinning. The BIOS don't even pop up. I can't even turn it off by holding the power button, I have to use the switch on the power supply. If I had to guess I would say it's either my video card or my CPU. Can anyone help me?

[R.]

That sucks man. A few months ago I was having similar problems where everything worked but nothing showed up. It turned out that my MOBO was shot because some of my liquid coolant got into the PCI port for my GFX card and everything died.

If you have integrated graphics on your MOBO or another GFX card, try hooking your monitor up to that and taking your GFX card out. If it works then that pretty much says its the GFX card.

You haven't made any recent hardware changes have you? Sounds like a dumb question but I was working on a friends laptop and I took the ram out and popped it back in switching the two chips on accident and the thing wouldn't start if they weren't in the old slot.

As for ruling out the CPU, I'm not really sure what to say. If it was overheating, it would shut its self off, so it's probably not a heat issue(probably).

Check out http://www.tomshardware.com/ you can pretty much ask a tech question about anything and it will be answered within a few hours usually. If the little ask a question box wont work, go to the forums because all the ask box does is post it to a board.

Good luck!

[C-Kwik]

I'd start with making sure the monitor works. Plug another PC to it if you have one. Or if you have another monitor, plug your PC into it. Try the onboard graphics if available as R. mentioned. If none of these work, I'd disconnect all non-essential hardware, including any power connectors. If it boots and displays, you know its something to do with the hardware that was disconnected. In this case, just start plugging in peripherals until the problem returns and you have your answer. If not, its something with the parts that still remain connected. With this, it can be a bit tricky to diagnose as the easiest method is to try and replace each component of the system until the problem is remedied. That can be expensive unless you happen to have (or at least access to) another computer with compatible parts or a bunch of spare parts lying around.

[maj Andres]

Thanks guys. Well I figuered it out, I just reset my cmos battery and the bios popped back up and I'm back in business! I even switched over to Linux Kubuntu, it's a little tricky but it's kinda fun "relearning" how to use a computer again. I was about to go buy a post card to narrow my problem down...

[R.]

Good news!

I ran Ubuntu on a old rack server in my basement for a while but it pretty much died. I want to get something with Linux going again in my house but I'm too lazy.