Ok, so I have this weird problem; for some unknown reason my pc won't start up correctly. I mean that my pc won't even load BIOS but just is there, doing nothing but powering the fans. And if I it actually loads the BIOS it might freeze after a random perioid of time. I've been thinking that something might have burned in there, but I can't figure out what, just the motherboard, or something else? All help would be appreciated; in finding out what the problem is and maybe in fixing it. Thank you all.
take out all but one stick of ram and try to boot it? (if that fails, try a different stick) unplug everything but the mobo and turn it on again check PSU?
how old is it? Is it clean inside? Sounds like it may be over heating. Does it work better the first time you turn it on after a few hours of being off?
Hmm. Maybe reset bios by pulling the cmos battery out? Just an idea don't try it until someone else says it won't kill your computer it worked for me but iono.
LMAO - actually, i basically agree, however I did run into this one case one time about 6 years ago . . . . aparently Compaq didn't have proper defaults on their systems to provide for this possibility. Good thing HP bought them out.
The PC is fairly "new", about 2 years old. The one time it worked, I actually checked the temperature readings from BIOS, but they were pretty stable running at 50°C, it's clean, and there isn't really a big difference on when it turns on, it's totally random. Let's say, for arguments sake, every tenth time it boots BIOS but freezes after a short perioid of time. I might actually try to boot the BIOS, cause I'm really helpless now. Oh, and I just realized(sp?) that if the PC won't start the mouse won't light up, so could there be some trouble with the USB ports? Buzzons: I checked the ram sticks, but haven't checked the PSU yet. But thanks for the answers, and keep 'em coming...
Intermittent problems as this appears to be are usually hardware related. Something may well be going bad - Your memory, PSU, MoBo, possibly your CPU but that I would think be a very rare case. It could even be your hard drive or CDROM - if their problem caused them to draw some inordinate amount of power. I would consider detaching first everything you don't really need/use every day (e.g. your CDROM) just to see if the problem goes away. If you have any spare parts (like an old graphics card) swap the parts out. If that doesn't help you should detach everything except say the CPU and memory and Keyboard to see if the problem goes away and then attach things again one at time to figure out when the problem returns. I wouldn't worry about your USB ports though - during POST the BIOS programs the USB hubs - and turns them on, that’s when the bus gets power and the devices get recognized and then are allowed to turn on. If the BIOS doesn't get that far then yeah they won't power up. Unfortunately if it doesn't get that far it usually means something critical like memory is causing the problem.
