I'll just come out of lurking ... I'd would suggest pulling out all the peripherials including the video card - make sure you have the speaker plugged in. When you power on, you should get the beeping indicating no video card. You could also try pulling the memory - a lot of bioses give a series of beeps when there's no memory either. In fact - it possibly could be a power supply issue - does your video card have a molex power supply to it as well? Perhaps your 5V rail has either gone pffft. (You haven't mentioned the loss of magic smoke - so it must be a pffft) Either that, or the 12 V rail is good enough to operate the optical drives + hard drives, but if the mother board has detected 'dirty' power supply, it may refuse to boot. (You may need to physically unplug from the mains and leave the machine for 15 minutes ... I did this on a very old computer when I was attempting something you shouldn't with the machine fully powered on ... tripped the 'dirty power supply'[0] rail and the machine needed to be unplugged from the wall completely first ...) If this is the case ... perhaps the video card is getting enough power from the molex, hence the Nvidia BIOS splash with nothing else? Hope this helps in some way. Warren. 0 - AKA shorted the incorrect two pins :( On 2006-07-21, at 01:54 , Chris O'Halloran wrote:
Thanks for the suggestions.
On rereading my email, perhaps I wasn't clear. My computer is not actually getting to the BIOS screen, it's only doing the quick text display that the nVidia graphics chip flashs just before the motherboard bios takes over.
Power supply is a good suggestion but no, nothing untoward sounding and the CD and DVD roms operate so the 12V rail is probably good.
I'll test the supply to the harddrives but I am still suspcious that the BIOS screens aren't coming up.
Thanks for the suggestions.
On 21/07/06, Glenn Enright <elinar(a)ihug.co.nz> wrote:
On Friday 21 July 2006 12:26, Chris O'Halloran wrote:
Is the motherboard stuffed? Is the BIOS stuffed?
Any thoughts or recommendations etc.
Chris
OK easy stuff first. Make sure the keyboard is plugged in properly. All the other plugs are seated properly. Actually remove and re-plug them.
Can you access the bios menu? Does it all look sensible? Try changing a non-essential value, saving and then see if it boots? Or resetting the bios to default values.
How many different things screens do you see on screen? I'm not sure about the nvidia bios but sound like it runs a custom splash screen. can you turn this off in the bios? The you should see something similar to the follwing three screens, the graphics card is detected, then post screen where disk drives are found and memory checked, then another screen that lists bios settings for components and a message "Booting..."
If you still have no joy my first thought is that your power supply is fried. Does it smell bad (burnt acidic smell)? Fan goes etc? Strange sounds comming from it? eg ticking snapping or other :( similar things.
You seem to be happy enough to open the case so here's some other ideas. BIG FAT NOTE: Don't have the pc plugged into the mains while you do this, and wear an antistatic wrist strap. Read all of the below before starting.
Vibration can jiggle components out of place. As a last resort, very carefully remove and and reseat all components including power plugs an memory sticks.If needful do the same to the CPU, but remember that you will need to clean off and reapply the contact material for the heatsink.
-- Nobody ever forgets where he buried the hatchet. -- Kin Hubbard
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