Friend's computer won't POST?

mitch212k

mitch212k

mitch212k

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hi everyone

I have a friend who's pc just won't post. It'll boot for approx. 8 seconds off the hard drive or approx 17 seconds off the dvd drive with an xp disc in there.

It's a Packard Bell OEM Machine. Motherboard is a GA-8SIML-NF and the screen in question is an FT500 (in case it's a screen issue). It's running off integrated graphics also.

I checked all connections and there are no issues, HD is spinning up, CPU fan is spinning up and I can sit and browse about the BIOS for any length of time. It is when I leave the BIOS a few seconds after regardless of boot device the screen just sits powered on but blank.

It's also worth noticing that the machine will shows the "any key to book from CD" message and I can hit any key and it will begin to check hardware status (or whatever the 2nd step of the os installation is) before the screen just goes blank again, with no apparent change from the machine with regards to HD spinning etc.

Should I try to boot the machine using an old X300 of mine? To see if it will remedy the problem?

Any ideas please?

thanks!
 
Just to set the record straight, its already POST'ed. POST is the short tests before you can even enter bios. Your friends system is failing to load the OS.

Sounds to me like its crashing out as soon as it tries to switch the graphics card from text mode to graphics mode, during the boot sequence. As you have a spare graphics card, it does make sence to try it out.

You could also try to boot in VGA mode (mash F8 just before windows starts loading to get a selection selection screen, and select boot VGA mode). That should eliminate basic "driver" issues, although as booting from the XP disk fails as well I suspect it wont help.
 
Try swap testing the memory if possible. Does the machine restart or just power off? Also look into the PSU.
 
Princey said:
Try swap testing the memory if possible. Does the machine restart or just power off? Also look into the PSU.
Click to expand...

Machine does nothing so to speak. The screen just goes into standby mode. There is only 1 stick of RAM and I think the PSU is still running. It is very weird.
 
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