Help, wife's computer failed!

prescott28 · 9 Feb 2011 at 10:24

Well, title says it all!

The machine is

Mobo - Gigagbyte GA G33 micro board
Processor Intel Dual core
Windows 7

The machine has been having bouts of working or not when switched on and was running last night after a lot of trying. Today, though, nothing. There is no output to the screen at all. I have tried swapping between the graphics card and the mobo for the output to the monitor to see if there was any graphics card problem but nothing there. Everything seems to run otherwise.

The only clue I have is that sometimes the CPU far seems to not run . Could this suggest the CPU could have overheated? If so, how could I test this?

Any other ideas would be gratefully accepted to get this fixed.

prescott28 · 9 Feb 2011 at 10:31

Thanks for the reply, edscdk. When I press the power button -

The case lights come on
Fans come on
Noise suggestive of some disk action happen but only for a short time. (sorry no disc activity light on case)

That's about it.

prescott28 · 9 Feb 2011 at 10:40

Ah, but that's the problem - there is no output to the screen at all. Not even any bios output. If I had bios output I could work things out rather more easily.

prescott28 · 9 Feb 2011 at 10:47

Thanks, adscdk. I'll get going with that and see how it goes.

prescott28 · 9 Feb 2011 at 13:12

Thanks for all the help so far, guys.

I have now removed all but one stick of RAM and the drives and there is no graphics output from either the graphics card or the mobo graphics ouput. No BIOS screen appears and the monitor never even indicates it has signal by stopping flashing. I'll try removing the graphics card but suspect I already know the answer.

So, we come down to the mobo or the CPU. Having recently had to replace a Gigabyte motherboard on my own machine (that was out of warranty because the 3 years starts at manufacture and not the date bought!) I am suspicious of the mobo more than the CPU. I am therefore inclined to replace the mobo and see what happens.

Anyone got any suggestions as to anything else I could check by way of deciding if it is mobo or CPU or is replacing the mobo the only really helpful way to go?

prescott28 · 9 Feb 2011 at 15:06

Sounds like a good idea to get a board ordered up straight away. It might be a bit of work - it is is a small desktop case so will be really fiddly - but I don't see much else to try. I am down to mobo, CPU or RAM and having 4 sticks of RAM and each tried I don't think it is RAM.

After my last experiences from Gigabyte, however, I am not too keen on Gigabyte and will probably go for Asus instead this time.

prescott28 · 9 Feb 2011 at 15:39

Silenced said:
I don't know if anyone has mentioned it but you might want to just check that the monitor even works on another PC

Sorry, forgot to mention that. I link my net book to the monitor that is usually connected to the PC and it worked fine - actually a very good picture for such a small device!

Thanks for the suggestion though.