Solved Power on, no post, no beeps, black screen...

[iTRiP]

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[ignatzatsonic]

If you had a thunderstorm and lightning, it could be more than one component, but the likely suspects are power supply and motherboard.

Here is a way to troubleshoot from member TVeblen:

Strip it down and then add components back, one at a time, to try and isolate the offending component.

The test (power off, power cord unplugged):
• Disconnect everything externally connected except the mouse and keyboard (printers, USB devices). If you are not using a wired mouse and keyboard see if you can borrow one.
• Disconnect the power and data cables from all the drives inside the computer (Hard drives, DVD/CD drives).
• Remove all the cards installed in the PCI slots including the video card. (be careful handling them and place them on a non conductive surface while testing).
• Remove all the RAM sticks (same rules as above).
Now connect the power cord and turn the PC on.
• The motherboard should start beeping. You should get a beep code that tells you there is no memory. This is good, it means the processor is functioning and the motherboard is good so far.
• Now add one stick of memory in Slot A1 and power on. More beeping: "no video card" beep code. This is good.
• Then add the video card and connect it to the monitor. You should get no beeping and you should see the BIOS screens, ending with the message that there is no boot device.
If you get no video then switch the one memory stick installed for another one and test.

Continue adding components one at a time.

If at any point the PC fails the the last component added was the problem one.

If you removed everything and there is only the Motherboard (with integrated video), processor, and power supply to contend with and it does not POST or show anything on the screen, then the problem is one of those three.

If you have tested by using another power supply then you are down to two. CPUs rarely fail, so motherboard is the most likely guess.

Try performing a CLRTC or Clear CMOS as a last ditch effort, and check the 3v battery. Both long shots, but what do you have to lose at this point.

 

[iTRiP]

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[ignatzatsonic]

Without specialized tools--such as a multimeter or beyond, troubleshooting normally involves some guesswork and temporary replacement of suspected bad parts to see if the problem disappears.

You can test a power supply with a paper clip, but I think all that really does is tell you whether or not its fan will spin, not whether it is completely fit to power a PC.

I know nothing about 2 phase versus 3 phase power.

Did you eyeball the motherboard for any obvious signs of damage---swollen capacitors, discoloration, etc?

It's good to always have a spare power supply on hand. If it works with a second power supply, you can likely eliminate the motherboard as a problem. Processors do fail, but it is VERY rare if they have not been seriously abused.

 

[simmo]

Only thing I can think of is that if your power lines were hit by a direct lighting strike is that for brief second you got a large spike in incoming power which has in turn fried several components..UPS's can only do so much when it comes to power supply "conditioning" i.e coping with smallish spikes up or down in your power supply.
I don't know a lot about 2 phase versus 3 phase either but what little I do know would indicate to me that it's not going to kill anything..your UPS should cope with that nps.
I'd be sticking another CPU in if possible..my guess is that your mobos died..I regularly abuse crap out of my CPU's via benching etc and they've never died.

 

[iTRiP]

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[ignatzatsonic]

would it then in this case be adviseable to single test each component in a alternate system?, would there not be to much a chance of directly and harmfully indangering the testing pc by the supposed dead{unknown state} parts?

Without tools, that's about all you can do--try to make another system of your questionable parts.

I think the chances of endangering any good parts are minimal--I'd just expect things to not boot or not install or not run at all. But it's your choice depending on your personal inclinations--you might learn something useful?

 

[iTRiP]

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[Just Plain Erik]

No Beeps No Video solved

My wife's PC just started having problems.
1. The monitor remains black but does indicate no signal.
2. There is no beep indicating successful POST.

I found a post that said to unplug the power, hold down the power button for 30-60 seconds and finally plug the power back in. I was skeptical but it worked!

Can anyone explain what this procedure does? why it works? I have never heard of this procedure before.

Just Plain Curious

 

[iTRiP]

Had another one of these happen to me again lately, this time on my other pc, motherboard must have had some bashing with the frequent power outages lately and when I attempted to remove the cmos battery to reset the board, it just never came on again.

[powers up for 1.5 seconds no beeps, then nothing, endless loop], it did make one~time an endless beeps for those 1.5 seconds of power on, after I had it sitting there for a whole day without power and cmos batter removed out of the 69 odd attempts to reanimate the pc?

Motherboard death probability estimate (90%),
CPU death probability estimate (2%),
Power supply unit death probability estimate (8%).

It's a good thing my ram is returnable or exchangeable in this case if it's the ram that's dead, but I seriously doubt that.

And the GPU and other devices still do their thing witch I reinstalled in this pc I'm typing from now.