Solved Screen Stays in Standby: Hardware died?

[Metalmonkey47]

Hey guys, trying to track down an issue on my gaming PC. I tapped the keyboard to take the computer out of sleep mode, and when it powered up the screen stayed in standby. I held the power switch down until it shut off, and upon releasing it powered back on instantly. I flipped the power off on the power supply, and let it sit for a minute or so before trying to turn it back on, and once pressing the power button, the fans start, proc fan, power supply fan, video card fan are all running, however I have seemingly no drive activity, or ANY video signal. No bios post, nothing.

I hate the idea of throwing money at something without some kind of educated assumption, or diagnostics. One of our family PC's did something similar recently that ended up being a crap power supply, but again.... I have no reason to assume that's all it is.

All of my system specs are up to date on my profile and the basics are below:

CPU: AMD FX 8120 -8 Core Black Edition
MB: AsRock 970DE3/U3S3 ATX
Ram: 8GB Crucial 1600
Video: Gigabyte Nvidia 650TI
PSU: 600Watt OCZ Stealth xStream

 

[Gator]

Hi metal monkey..

It would seem like your problem could be a bad and/or loose connecter/cable or it could be your motherboard or video card. Another possibility is ram.

First check all connections and ensure they are tight and secure. Remove any extra HD's you have connected other than the one you need to boot from.

What I would do is remove all ram besides one stick, place it in position one and see if it boots. If not, try another stick, etc etc. (If you have a stick of ram you know works, try it as well)

Try reseating your video card. If that doesn't work, use onboard video card (if you have one, i semi looked it up and maybe you don't have onboard video card?)

If none of those work, try to find a known good powersupply, although I doubt this is your problem unless its simply not getting enough power. If it powers most of the mobo, its usually fine.

If all this fails, try a known good Video card. If that doesn't work, I'd say you need a new mobo.

 

[essenbe]

Metalmonkey47, with your monitor only, it could be a bad monitor, bad connection or a video cable, but with no hard drive activity it sounds a little more serious than that. I would go through and make sure all cables are connected properly and securely and make sure they are fully seated. Also check them closely that no cable is frayed or shorted. If no signal is getting to your monitor or to your hard drive at the same time, I would be looking at your board or Power supply. So, be sure, as Gator said, to reseat your graphics card and in the process make sure there is no dust or anything else obstructing the pcie slot and see if you can tell for sure if your hard drive is spinning up. If not, check both ends of both cables.

 

[Metalmonkey47]

Thanks for the prompt responses guys! It took me all of about 5 minutes to figure out where my issue lies. I was checking my cables, cards, etc, and saw that one of my ram cards was magically loose. (Not sure how that happens? Maybe it wasn't fully seated to begin with....)

Anyways, after a few minutes of triple checking everything else, she's up and running again. Dodged a bullet with that one. Thanks again guys!!

 

[Gator]

Thanks for the prompt responses guys! It took me all of about 5 minutes to figure out where my issue lies. I was checking my cables, cards, etc, and saw that one of my ram cards was magically loose. (Not sure how that happens? Maybe it wasn't fully seated to begin with....)

Anyways, after a few minutes of triple checking everything else, she's up and running again. Dodged a bullet with that one. Thanks again guys!!

Great to hear you got it fixed!

It seems easy, but you would be surprised that a techs first place to run to is checking cables and connections of everything. Solves problems more times than you would think.

 

[essenbe]

Glad to hear you have her going again. Good job.