Help me diagnose a dead PC

Vertigo

Vertigo

Vertigo

Soldato
Joined
28 Dec 2003
Posts
16,713
Ok, so the missus' PC seems to be toast.

Yesterday it was working fine then it froze solid - mouse wouldn't even move which is never a good sign. We were just about reach for the power button when suddenly it unfroze, made a weird screeching noise and looked like it was trying to "catch up" with all the mouse clicks and movements we'd tried while it was frozen. Very bizarre but seemed ok after that.

At the next reboot however, the machine won't even POST. It powers up for literally two seconds - the drives and fans spin up and so on, then it powers off. It then tries again a few seconds later and just goes round in this endless loop.

I've disconnected all drives and removed all expansion cards, including the graphics (it has onboard gfx so should still POST) but it's exactly the same.

All that's left now is the mobo, CPU, memory and PSU so it has to be one of these. Does anyone have any idea which the likely culprit is? In order to diagnose further I'm going to need to start dismantling other machines to free up spare parts to swap out to test so if anyone has any ideas which is the most likely culprit it would help a lot.

Thanks.
 
Have removed RAM completely and still won't POST.

No beeps, nothing, just powers on then off again repeatedly.

It's a Gigabyte S1156 mobo with an i3 processor.

OS isn't relevant, never gets that far and hard drives are disconnected.

I'm thinking the mobo tbh.
 
Going to eliminate or prove the PSU shortly by stealing one out of another box. If that fails then I know it's the CPU or mobo.

Luckily a friend has a very similar i3/mobo/mem combo lying around that they've yet to sell. Might pinch this off him to test out or even just buy :)
 
So the CPU fan spins up then power cuts then turns back on and off again?

Take the CPU out and test the motherboard. If that doesn't work, then I think the motherboard is at fault.
 
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