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After trying to upgrade a friends computer, adding a new DVD- CDRW combo, I got no screen on the monitor. Nohting came up not even the BIOS, and the monitors light turned yellow. I tried it on 2 monitors and the same problem. He mentioned that during unplugging his computers connections, he was pulling on the Monitors wire, the one connected on the computer. Could it be that he messed up his video card, or motherboard by doing so?
Well, I'm not sure but I'll say that his video card is messed up, try testing it with a different video card. You could've messed it up with static electricity..were you grounded when you were installing the DVD-R?
No i was not properly grounded. But i did have my arm on the metal part. Plus I didn't touch the video card. So do you think its the video card. Everything is connected properly checked all of that. So what do you think. Video card, or motherboard? I really dont think its the motherboard.
Have you tried disconnecting the DVD-CRDW and restoring the computer to what it was prior to?Quote:
After trying to upgrade a friends computer, adding a new DVD- CDRW combo, I got no screen on the monitor.
Cheers
You need to develop reliable troubleshooting techniques; these are your pillars of strength in a horrible situation such as no access to the Internet.
- Making the problem as simple as possible.
- All components the computer doesn't deem vital shall be unplugged.
Vital:- VGA
- HDD
- CPU
- PSU
Inspection- All power terminals are checked, plugged in and on.
- All cards appear to be seated in the correct fashion.
- All Onboard power sources are live.
- All power sources are live in the wall.
- All components appear to be clean .
- All components appear to be not charred.
- All components smell like working components.
Process of elimination.- First reseat the card.
- Second try different slots.
- Try the card in another board.
- Try another card in the board.
etc....etc....
I need more info on what's happening with the board.
Adding to what !mitationRust has said you need to learn the 4 steps a computer takes to boot up. Knowing this greatly increases your ability to trouble shoot
Steps:
1 POST
2 BIOS
3 Loading of OS
4 OS loads processes and applications
So lets start at step 1, Did you hear any POST beep codes?? If you hear more then 1 beep then something is wrong and you need to check your mobo documentation to figure out what it means... I'm almost positive it's the video card because a DVD/CD-RW does not cause a blank screen... So swap out the vid card with a working one and try a different monitor just to be sure it's not the monitor.
!mitationRust is spot on! you need a systematic process of elimination, a sort of check list ;)
You don't mention it, but did you try a different monitor cable?.................he might have damaged the pins. I am assuming that the connection on the motherboard is female, so it would be quite difficult to damage that.
:)
And if he HAS bent some pins .............
a 'propelling' pencil, with the lead removed can be used to slide over said bent ones to EASE them back into the correct orientation ........
I was thinking more of breaking connections to the pins, or breaking a pin itself. If the pins were bent he wouldn't be able to plug it in again?Quote:
He mentioned that during unplugging his computers connections, he was pulling on the Monitors wire, the one connected on the computer
:)
We can eliminate the pins problem, because I already tried a different monitor. Now I tried another video card. But the video card pins seem differrent, although it still fit (AGP). And still no picture when trying a brand new video card. And when I do turn on the computer, I hear no beeps whatsoever. All the fans are working properly. CPU fan is on, case fan is on, and PSU fan is on. This computer is very old. Pentium 1 socketed. ???? Any ideas?? I did try to put the old cdrw back, and still same issue, no picture on monitor. They said it was working before I tried anything. I really dont see how it got messed up, could it have been the pulling on the monitor wire, the one connected on the computer???
I've seen situations where a bad hard drive, or other ide device,
improperly configured (jumpers set wrong) will prevent the
computer from even entering POST. No light, no sound, nothing.
Remove the new drive. make sure the cable to the hard drive
was not knocked loose.
:cool:
There are different types of AGP, but in theory you should not be able to fit the wrong one..................here is a revolutionary idea..............try a PCI video card :cool:Quote:
Now I tried another video card. But the video card pins seem differrent, although it still fit
AND..............take the monitor and cable to another machine and see if it works. You have NOT ELIMINATED THE CABLE from what you have told us. It could easily have been damaged by being pulled around.
Also, what operating system are you using?
No BIOS beeps is generally not a good sign, but did it ever beep? A lot of commercial machines of that era did not have a speaker in them (use in open plan offices etc)
:)
The hard drive is set properly. What I tried now is to remove the RAM and start it up, to make sure its not the MOBO, but the mobo did moke some beeping noises. So I guess the MOBO is not the issue. I think they gave him the wrong video card. Although the old does say AGP on the Video cards heatsink. And the new one does fit in the slot. Although the video card has 3 sets of those pins, and the old one has only two as well as the AGP? slot on the Mobo which is brown.
NIhil, I already tried another monitor, and that came with another cable, so its not the cable. And the computer does beep, because I removed the ram then it beeped (of course i put the ram back). The old video card is a Diamond SPDSTR A50 8MB 'AGP'. THe new one is a 32MB AGP video card. ANd still no picture. I have no clue whats wrong. I have tried 2 monitors with 2 different cables. ANy ideas anyone.
Now I am confused, you said it was a Pentium I machine? it should not have an AGP slot.
What processor is it supposed to have? and what does it actually have................what mobo is it?
Do the floppy and HDD lights come on when you fire it up?
$64,000 question: did you see it working before you got involved?
Can we have the FULL hardware specifications?
It sounds as if someone has been trying to upgrade a machine beyond it's upgradability point?
:confused:
I will clarify:
In a Pentium I box I would expect to see long brown slots (ISA)
Shorter, white ones (PCI)
72 pin EDO RAM slots
A short, brown slot is AGP, and belongs to the late Pentium II and PIII eras.
WEll I had already worked on this machine before. I remember it had 350MHz and I do recall it was a Pentium 1. Can Pentium 2 have 350MHz? Yeah well, I do think its a Pentium 2 now. And yeah, the motherboard has the short brown slot for the video, AGP. It takes 168-pin SDRAM, which i installed a while back and it was working.
Now there is something really weird going on. WHen i power it on, the led lights in the fron just stay on. Ok, that might not be the weird part. WHen I eject the CDROM, it doesnt eject, the led light doesnt even turn on. I tried a different molex connector and a different working CDrom and still, it does not eject. This is just so weird. All the fans everywhere else on the Case, psu, and CPU turn on. THe NIC on it also flashes its led lights. This is just so weird. Has the whole thing just gone bad??
Hi,
It has to be a Pentium II or possibly an early PIII.
The SDRAM also indicates a PII or PIII.
Is the floppy drive light on all the time? if so the connector is in the wrong way round :D
You might also try removing the CD and trying without it?
:)
Try booting with the cdrom unplugged (both power and ribbon cables)
Simplify the troubleshooting as much as possible.
:cool:
This is starting to sound like a faulty motherboard that is about to die...
The fact that no video is showing but yet you get no beep codes is indicating a faulty agp slot. If there is a faulty agp slot POST will not notice it because it doesn't look for that. Now you have other "phantom" problems... At this point it's better if you buy a new computer, unless you can find a P2 mobo somewhere to swap...
Why do you have the nic card and CD-Rom, DVD, floppy etc...etc..still in? Unplug everything useless from the board, remember K.I.S.S? ............ This could be as simple as a weak PSU, but you wouldn't know because you haven't made the problem simple.
Also this is where I bought mine. Anti Static Wrist strap w/Adjustable Ground
http://www.jab-tech.com/customer/pro...5&cat=0&page=1
It's not worth shocking a $200 item when you could've bought the insurance for under $10.
Edit: it could be a grounding issue with the VGA bracket rest. I'd try the board on a piece of antistatic material also. But hey, that's just me; you seem a little scared to touch the other components.
To my knowledge NIC's and CD-RW's do not cause screen blackouts...
Perhaps I am taking the wrong aproach to this problem...?? I am making educated assumptions... which is faulty agp slot. I have made this assumption based on fact and experience... Although K.I.S.S. is a very good way of troubleshooting and is a method I use myself, I don't see how this method will work in this situation. Even if you only have the PSU, RAM, Vid card, HDD, and CPU (of course), how would you determine it was the PSU vs a faulty agp slot... You really can't without a voltmeter... Or unless your thinking around the idea that since there are less components that are using the PSU we will notice a difference in that maybe the vid card will start receiving enough power....?? Though I will admit that a dying PSU does seem just as likely...
With the Mobo being not so new.. and the system isnt actually booting..
How abot the CMOS battery?.. if it is Flat as a tack the system will not boot.. (it should be 3V any less than that and the mobo will be unreliable to start.. some will start ok down to 2V below that .. your on your own
And as the duck has commented.. is your 12V, 5v 3.3v working from your PSU
With the comments about the CD-ROM not being able to eject, my money is on the power supply being bad. Was the ribbon cable connected when you tried to eject it? Try it without the ribbon cable, just the power to the CD-ROM.
I've seen the symptons quite a few times but the cause isn't always the same.
!mitationRust KISS method is very sound when you have a non-specific problem like this.
I doubt that this is the videocard directly. Normally a badly seated card will cause bios beep codes as the motherboard will detect a lack of video ram.
Take everything out except the motherboard and the case connections to it. EVERYTHING else. Unplug the power, take out the CPU the ram, unplug the IDE devices from both the power and the ide cables, unplug the floppy.
Put each bit back in one piece at a time. Start with the CPU. Put it in and switch on. It won't boot of course but you're just looking/listening for beeps to let you know the mobo isn't dead.
You might need to juggle parts to identify the faulty componant.
My guess (and it's a guess) it is either faulty/badly seated RAM or ram slot or a faulty power supply. Those were the most common reason when I've seen pcs with the symptoms you describe.
PS a 350MHz PIICPU is a great brick of thing, P1 were small flat chips more like CPUs today.
Whoa, guess what guys. I think it was the PSU. I unplugged the NIC, dissconnected the HDD molex, the FLoppy power connector and the CDroM connector, and now I get a picture on my monitor. Hmm... So I guess it is a bad power supply right guys???
Plug 'em back in one-by-one and see which device causes the failure. In my experiance, if the power supply is bad - nothing works.
That is true Dino~, but they don't all go with a flash and a bang? sometimes the deterioration is more gradual. Perhaps the new DVD/Cd was "the straw that broke the camel's back"Quote:
In my experiance, if the power supply is bad - nothing works.
I would be inclined to replace it right now as if it does go "pop" there is no knowing what it might take with it.
kyrios I did suggest earlier that the machine had probably been "over upgraded"? this is a typical symptom. Some of those old boxes only had 175W~195W units in them, and their performance is quite likely to deteriorate with time. People forget to upgrade the PSU with the rest of the components.
:)
POST will not notify you if there is a faulty agp slot though...Quote:
I doubt that this is the videocard directly. Normally a badly seated card will cause bios beep codes as the motherboard will detect a lack of video ram.
Anyway it seems we have found out the problem and I guess it was because of this:
I have just never troubleshooted a PSU that way lol, If I suspect a PSU I just check it with a known good one...Quote:
Or unless your thinking around the idea that since there are less components that are using the PSU we will notice a difference in that maybe the vid card will start receiving enough power....??
So what was the fact? What facts should one go by to know when to pretermit solid troubleshooting techniques?Quote:
Originally posted here by The Duck I am making educated assumptions... which is faulty agp slot. I have made this assumption based on fact and experience...
I wasn't just guessing. I have experienced what he has encountered here, you are speculating as to it and quite honestly having a narrow viewpoint. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but if I were encountering the issue for the first time I'd hope I could ask someone who had actually seen a plethora of occurrences with combinations of power, chips and drives, rather than someone who could just dance around the fact that that they have seen one or two and suggest a new board based on little to zilch research and anecdotal evidence. If what he said is true and it's his PSU, you see how the techniques of (POE) Processes of Elimination and (K.I.S.S.) Keep it Simple Silly have worked here?
It's simply working smarter not harder. It's not about wild guessing from this component to the next at the beginning. It's about taking a bunch of unwarranted variables out of the equation at the beginning, thus making the problem simpler. K.I.S.S ties into the method of POE. If he had unplugged the CD-ROM and everything worked again he would know that he was juicing too much off that one voltage rail.Quote:
Originally posted here by The Duck Although K.I.S.S. is a very good way of troubleshooting and is a method I use myself, I don't see how this method will work in this situation. Even if you only have the PSU, RAM, Vid card, HDD, and CPU (of course), how would you determine it was the PSU vs a faulty agp slot...
You said it's the board get a new one. Why would you care if he starts to unplug the nic and floppy etc...etc...? He has to take them out anyway if he gets a new board.
Sometimes you can't explain why computers do the things they do, at least with pocket change and little time you can't.
EDIT:
All is well duck, hopefully everyone learns something new when they come to this board, at least that's the reason I came. But you start to understand voltage consumption real fast when you start to overclock your graphics card etc...etc...
:)
Eh, !mitationRust , your to late pal :D. I already figured out why the KISS and POE method worked in this situation, look above your last post, second quote...
The fact is that POST will not notify you if an AGP slot is faulty... And my research and evidence is my experience... Faulty AGP slots are not always easy to find. It was looking like it could have gone either way, mobo or PSU... and I never ruled out a bad PSU.Quote:
So what was the fact?
rather than someone who could just dance around the fact that that they have seen one or two and suggest a new board based on little to zilch research and anecdotal evidence.
But like I said, I learned something new. I learned that it is possible to determine a bad PSU without having to replace it with a known good one or using a voltmeter :).
**Edit**
Bah, didn't see your edit lol :)
WEll thank all of you so much. I think I have this problem over with.
If I might be permitted to add a postscipt to this thread and the fault finding methodologies.
1. The fundamental question is am I doing this for FREE or for PAYMENT The "rules of engagement" are quite different. An old box isn't worth very much so a systematic approach may well not be appropriate?
In the case of a for payment job you look at the easy to check, obvious, cheap to fix first. If that doesn't pan out, you tell the customer that the machine is beyond economic repair.
In this case, a dead or damaged MoBo is a no-no.....................PII = AT form factor, not ATX. You salvage what you can and move on.
2. Don't overlook the obvious but usually forgotten.
Examples would be: the power supply cable (remember that it probably has a $0.15 fuse in it) and video cable.
The CMOS battery (Nice one Undies~ )
3. Look First ..................
Charring, bulging capacitors, broken pins, cracked dry joints etc.......... AND COMPATIBILITY of the various components. In this case the PSU, but there are others, a lot of components won't run on less than a P200 or less than Windows 98SE
4. Don't forget safe mode (assuming you can get that far) that frequently shows driver or conflict problems.
5. If you are charging, don't use second user components ......................you are guaranteeing them. :eek:
6. A good cleanout and re-seating often works wonders :D
BIOS
Some are better than others with their diagnostics, Phoenix BIOS had over 100 beep codes, most have only around a half-dozen.
Aspman made an interesting comment The simpler BIOSes treat video RAM and system RAM pari passu. So, if you hear two beeps, you know the first move should be to clean and re-seat them.
Multimeters?....................useful, but for troubleshooting a PSU, all they will tell you if there is an obvious problem, as you are not testing the unit under full operating load?
Just a few thoughts :)