Computer Booting, but nothing on screen.

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"Computer Booting, but nothing on screen." does pretty much describe it all.

The night before this started I had put it into sleep/hibernate to try it then next morning when booting it up there were some Host service problems and explorer.exe was having problems. Restated and windows was asking to be activated with they serial key after being activated and been using it for several months happily. Restarted again and then booted up yet nothing displayed on screen at all. But I think this is pretty much unrelated.

Before this all BIOS settings have been kept the same and I haven't fiddled with the innards at all except for adding a sound card and a new hard drive but they were both several months ago and the computer has been working fine and hasn't been touched since.

No bleeps from the mobo or if they are there but I'm not hearing them. Nothing on screen at all, have tested with different monitors and leads to monitor. Tried reseating gfx card, checked all power connections, tried with my 2 bits of ram separately, tried taking out cmos battery and clearing the cmos with the jumper pins.

Not sure what else to try the same thing has happened occasionally but a simple shutdown and restart just fixes it.

What else can I try, and if any more information is needed I can get it.
 
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Well it is a fatality board... says it all really. :p

Wasn't my choice though *cough ocuk cough* although it has been working fine since buying it. ^^

Anything else I can check?
 
If it still appears to be booting up fine, then that would lead me to think the video card has gone **** up, it might help if you listed all your components.
 
Is there any chance of getting hold of another video card to test? that would be the first thing to try, seeing as the system still appears to be loading the os. I take it when you say it's still booting up you mean there is hdd activity and not just the power led on?
 
I meant it was just turning on fans running, leds on inside, hadn't checked the HD activity.

There is no HD activity from what I can see from the LED (ie. its off). Does that indicate a broken mobo, or am I off base?
 
hmmm... Well that's put an altogether different light on the subject. Do you get memory beeps when no memory is installed? Could well be the board now I know it's not actually booting. Try running it with everything that's not essential plugged in ie usb, firewire devices, and any add in cards that you have. It's just a process of elimination now really.

I have come across several machines where a usb device is hanging the system before post.
 
Nope no memory bleeps with no ram in, but then again I've never heard any beeps from the computer ever so...

Nothing else is attached, only gfx lead and speaker leads from onboard sound and sound card to see if it would play beeps through those but nothing.

Removed sound card no change, 2nd hard drive no change, 1st hard drive no change.

Really doesn't leave much else there really, looks like I'll have to do my best testing or trying other parts fo gfx card, psu, ram. After that there's only really mobo and cpu left :(.
 
Sounds exactly like what happened to me, put vista into sleep mode never recovered. Called up a pc repair shop they come round and charged me £120 quid for what they said were corrupt files on the HD.. yea so why couldn't i get into the BIOS. Anyway someone on here explained what the problem probably was and said it just needed a BIOS reset.
 
Sounds exactly like what happened to me, put vista into sleep mode never recovered. Called up a pc repair shop they come round and charged me £120 quid for what they said were corrupt files on the HD.. yea so why couldn't i get into the BIOS. Anyway someone on here explained what the problem probably was and said it just needed a BIOS reset.

Can you explain what they did to fix it? Also, by a BIOS reset are you talking about the CMOS no?

Thanks. :)
 
It's really hard to tell what's up by what you have posted. :confused:
Sounds like you have had a Power cut during the night. If you can't get into Bios I don't know what to suggest other than borrowing another system & swapping components out until you get life again. Sorry but this is all I can suggest with the info at hand.
 
I'll try and get round to testing parts later today, but so far in short:

PC powers up but monitor remains black.
No motherboard beeps, ram in or not.
No harddrive activity.
I cannot access the BIOS, well I might be able to but the screen remains black from when I power it on to when I power it off again.

This all happened after leaving vista in sleep/hibernate overnight and then it asking to be activated after being activated 6 months ago. Possibly related, probably not.

Once I see if I can test parts I'll post the results later.
 
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