Catz's computer died!

Technology and Gaming Help and Support
#21

wait wait… I may have misled you on the beep thing.

When it DOES start, there are normal ‘gears working’ type noises that you hear a computer make. I dont know if they could have been construed as ‘beep’ noises but more like simply hearing your computer make connections. Does that make sense?

At any rate… now, when I press the power button, the power button light goes on as well as the amber light indicating powerup. But then there are no subsequent computer running noises that happen. Eventually after about 15 seconds, the amber light goes out. Yet the power on button is still lit, and the fans are still running.

#22

Aha, I had something to this extent too a while back. The cause was a not fully plugged in component.
Does it make that grinding noise periodically? Or just once and then nothing?

#23

Those noises are usually old leaky capacitors, it means your computer was gonna die soon anyway.

#24

no. no no. When you start your computer, it is not utterly silent. There is noise. Besides the fans, there is noise. THAT is what I dont have right now.

And I think I will move this thread seeing how all my good buddies are helping after all.

(btw my home consists of a family of 5. Me being the out of work mom. If we loose our house, well I guess we will be renting an apartment.)

#25

My mom might lose her house too, she would probably rent an apartment too, if I get a job before then I will move out on my own, I hate living in a small place with other people.

#26

Either graphics card or the motherboard. Remove the graphics card, try the onboard video. If not, its gonna be the motherboard. You could pick up a rig like that on ebay etc for next to nothing.

But, as you said, you don’t have the cash to spare, but unfortunatly, the MB is gonna need replacing. As sersoft said, its unlikley the CPU would go. I’ve never seen a stock CPU go.

#27

Be careful if you decide to replace the mobo, a standard atx mobo might not even fit that type of case, knowing gateway’s design style.

#28

While it could totally be the MoBo, I’m actually more inclined to think that it is either the Power Supply or the BIOS.
Especially because power is being sent to the optical drive, GPU, etc.
This would indicate a failing/failed Power supply more than anything wouldn’t it?
Is the Hard drive turning over? is the light on the front blinking? Im guessing not since you already said that there were no regular computer clicking noises…

Good luck. I hope this gets resolved soon…

#29

The “clickety-click grindgrindgrind” noises that usually in sync with the flashing LED on the front of the computer is you’re talking about, right? That’s your computer reading the hard drive to start your operating system (more specifically, it’s the armature inside the hard drive flicking back and forth as it reads data from the platters). If you don’t have that noise at all and can’t get any kind of POST display on your monitor, it means your computer isn’t even getting that far in its boot sequence. That’s bad news.

If you’re not getting system beeps at all, it’s probably because your internal pc speaker isn’t plugged in and that motherboard doesn’t have a surface-mounted speaker. That’s pretty common, most users find the power-on beep to be annoying after a while and eventually just unplug the speaker.

Based on the information you’ve posted so far, I can narrow the problem down to the following:

  1. The power supply. If you took a power surge recently, your computer’s PSU might be damage to the point where it can no longer power the CPU properly, resulting in fans spinning and internal devices lighting up, but no POST because the CPU doesn’t receive enough power. You can easily test this with a spare PSU, if you have one.

  2. The processor. If your CPU fan and heatsink were clogged with dust to the point where the fan no longer spins, then it’s possible that the CPU is damaged and non-functional due to overheating. This is extremely difficult to diagnose without having a spare processor around that will fit in that slot and work with the motherboard’s specifications. It’s also very unlikely because modern computers shut down if the CPU begins to overheat.

  3. The CPU fan. Most modern computers can tell if that fan is spinning or not, and will usually refuse to boot if it isn’t. Might want to double check this.

  4. The motherboard. As sersoft mentioned, the capacitors on the power supply side of the motherboard are pretty notorious for going bad these days. Take a close look at the capacitor cans right below (they’ll be above with the board mounted in your case) the CPU slot - you’ll see that they’re all scored with a + on top. If any look like they’ve puffed up on top (yes, that’s a technical term), you’re looking at a bad capacitor and the motherboard will need to be replaced.

More information would be needed to help narrow it down further.

#30

I had the same issues a while back. The fans would spin, lights come on, but there would be no video. It wasn’t the video card (I checked).

Turns out the power plug next to the CPU came unplugged. Not the big one, but there is a 6/8 pin plug that goes in right next to the CPU. Maybe check that one out.

#31

I had the same sort of problem on my laptop, it would power up and i would hear the noise i usually hear at start of boot, (its an Asus g1s and it makes an explosion noise when it boots) but then nothing else happened screen would stay off and wasn’t able to log in. I sent it to the manufacturer and it turned out it was a motherboard problem, and had to replace the entire mobo. Fortunately it was within warranty by a couple of days. :ninja:

#32

It’s a 4-pin plug on her motherboard, but yes she should definitely check that.

#33

That noise is the HDD spinning up and being initialized by the controller.
If you don’t have that your HDD controller does not start.
That combined with the fact that you don’t have ANY picture at all leads me to the conclusion that your motherboard is kaputt.

Try removing all RAM sticks - you should get a beepcode if you try to start the computer without any RAM. If you DON’t get any beepcodes you have proof for the borked mobo.

Fun fact: A friend of mine had the exact same problem about a month ago.
She got a new computer and I helped her migrate the old data last week utilizing the most rediculous external HDD setup ever :retard:

Anyway: Hope you can get that fixed soon!

#34

Pix or it didn’t happen, Nose!

Indeed, it looks like a Micro-ATX board, but it might not even be to the standard, knowing most computer manufacturers nowadays.

I really hope we can find a solution to the issue catz.
[COLOR=‘Black’]Not that I’ve really contributed anything here.[/SIZE]

#35

Hey I’m sorry and ima let your finish but I have the most ridiculous external hdd setup ever.

1440×1080 385 KB

#36

You shall recieve…

…tomorrow. I can’t be arsed to start any of my laptops now and get the pic off my phone…

#37

Hi,

i just had to register for this interesting issue, greetings from germany :slight_smile:

All the details lead to a high possibility that the power-supply has a faulty voltage-rail.
Just try this:

  • Disconnect the wallplug for some minutes. Caution! In rare cases where the psu has gone really bad it could blow up while you plug it back in, but there are security-circuits to avoid damage to the pc-components in it, so just go on.
  • While disconnected, disconnect the powercables of all unneeded devices like harddisk and optical drives. You just need the two cables from the psu to the mainboard be connected for this test.
  • eventually remove the graphics card and use the onboard-graphics
  • Plug the wallplug back in and try to fire up the machine

If it boots up more often now, try to reconnect each device one by one, at first the harddisk.

If you have a voltmeter available, try to mesure the voltage of the red and yellow cables while the pc is turned on. If not, ask a friend or neighbour, it’s a very common tool :slight_smile: https://tiny.cc/5dxsa
Just turn it to measure 20 Volt DC (like in the picture linked above)
Now connect the black measure cable to a black psu-cable ( https://tiny.cc/f0mFQ ) and tap the yellow and red psu-cable with the red measure-cable.
While tapping the red cable, the voltmeter should read 5,00 Volt +/- 10%
While tapping the yellow cable, the voltmeter should read 12,00 Volt +/- 5%
Also you can try to measure the orange lines that go to the motherboard while it’s connected, but its somehow tricky. It should read about 3,30 Volt.

If one of the lines don’t read the required values, you have to replace the power-supply.

Hope this could help a little bit :slight_smile:

#38

Or you could just stick a voltmeter on the biggest size molex plug coming from the powerbox while shorting pins 14 and 15… But that’s just my method cuz I’m lazy.

#39

That won’t tell you how the PSU performs under load, it just answers the question of whether or not voltage is coming out of the molex pins. That a bit pointless since we already know there’s voltage because she said fans are spinning up, but if the +12v rail is bad then the voltage would drop off precipitously as soon as the CPU starts trying to draw power. The end result of that is the computer would stall or just shut down.

#40

Well I’ve saved a motherboard once by doing that because I found out it was delivering over 20v on the 12v rail. :awesome:

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