Re: [OT] - pc dead

["Jon Wilkins" <jonpdwilkins@xxxxxxxxx>]

A fairly cheap suggestion may be to try switching out the PSU.  I've
recently had a lot of grief with my PC failing to boot, making various
different sequences of noises whilst booting; sometimes not even doing
anything except starting the various fans.  I had a spare PSU which I tried
that after re-seating everything else had made no difference.  Replacement
PSU has solved the problem - even though it's out of an old machine &
slightly lower power output.    So if you have a spare, its worth trying
it;  Alternatively you'd only lose 10-20 getting one just to try it out.


jon

On Dec 12, 2007 10:47 AM, Laurence Mason <laurence@xxxxxxx> wrote:

>   The family PC has stopped working and I would like some inspiration!
>
> The pc was on and working but no one was using it. On returning to it
> the screen was blank, would not display, touching mouse and keyboard
did
> not turn the display on (as it normally does). System powered
> immediately off on pressing power button (no need to hold for 5
seconds)
> i.e. o/s not running and must have rebooted to POST.
>
> Powering on the pc again produces various beeps but no output to
screen.
>
> two short / quick beeps
> 8 'normal' beeps
> pause
> 2 beeps
> 1 beep
>
> The motherboard is a M848A rev 2.1 with I believe AMI BIOS.
>
> T'net suggests that 8 beeps is related to the video card - so I have
> reseated this and also tried booting without - same error.
>
> I had earlier in the day added some memory but this had gone okay and
> the PC was working much better - XP has become so patched and bloated
> (or children had downloaded so much stuff) that it now does not really
> run on 256M so had increased it to 512M.
>
> I have removed the extra memory and reseated the original and this has
> made no difference.
>
> I have found one screw floating around inside the case (which should
> have been holding down the mother board) - it's possible that it
shorted
> something that it should not have done. However, I am also sat here
> waiting for the boiler to be repaired under contract as the hot water,
> but not radiators, have not worked since Monday - it appears the built
> in timer is not functioning correctly. On Monday we had a power cut
> (whilst the pc was on and it worked okay immediately afterwards) and
I'm
> wondering if there was a surge associated with it that caused some of
> the components to be stressed leading to premature failure of the PC
and
> cripple the heating controller? Am I likely to get any help from the
> power provider? How does one prove such things?
>
> I had put this machine together a couple of years ago with a colleague
> where I was then working and we had access to spare boards etc - this
is
> no longer the case which is a pain so I am open to suggestions!
>
> Thanks,
>
> Laurence
>
>
>



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