no lights, no beeps, no fans!

PuncH

PuncH

PuncH

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hello!

went round a friends tonight to sort out their slow pc (spyware riddled etc) but when we went to turn it on it was completely dead.

no lights, no fans, no beeps...nada

i tried swapping kettle leads and still got the same result, so i'm thinking dead psu?

apparently it was fine the night before and when we turned it on tonight there was no popping/smoke/sparks etc.

anu guidance welcome. thanks.
 
Sounds like either a faulty power switch, motherboard or PSU.

Try shorting the PWR pins on the motherboard with a screwdriver to see if the power switch is bust, or replace with the reset switch.

PSU is the most likely though. Does sound like a fairly bad failure.
 
Hello Yewen,

Thanks for the reply mate (I'm sure we're on each others xbox live friends list!)

The power switch on the PSU was the first thing I looked for, but it didn't have one. heh.
 
Its normally one of 3 things when this happens like Yewen said.

1. The power switch
2. The psu
3. mobo

BUT!.... with that said, i have seen a few and i do mean literally a few times when some brands of memory (not necessarily cheap stuff) can stop the PC booting on certain boards.

I say that because i had a PC here yesterday that did exactly that. It was OCZ with the headspreaders, replaced for the same stuff without the head spreaders and it worked first time, unworking ram was tested in another PC and it was fine. Its rare but possible.
 
t31os said:
Its normally one of 3 things when this happens like Yewen said.

1. The power switch
2. The psu
3. mobo

BUT!.... with that said, i have seen a few and i do mean literally a few times when some brands of memory (not necessarily cheap stuff) can stop the PC booting on certain boards.

I say that because i had a PC here yesterday that did exactly that. It was OCZ with the headspreaders, replaced for the same stuff without the head spreaders and it worked first time, unworking ram was tested in another PC and it was fine. Its rare but possible.
Click to expand...

hmmm, unlikely though, because this pc has been running fine for a couple of years until today! as the psu doesn't have a power switch i've ruled that out too.

thanks though.
 
Break it down then.

Unplug everything that the PC doesnt need, extra HDD's that dont have the OS, CD drives, case fans, and so on....... until you have only the required parts.

Try booting again, if you're successful you can add one thing at a time till you see problems, otherwise i'm pretty sure its one of the above mentioned.

Also how can you rule out the PSU just because it doesnt have a power switch, thats even more reason it could be the PSU, it could have died while no one was at the PC. Its still recieveing power unless its turned off at the mains.

And from what you've said, you get no lights, nothing...... generally you get lights on the mobo when the PSU is being powered, unless you have a i/o switch, which in this case you dont.
 
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You should really try shorting the power pins.

I deal with a lot of old industry PC's to restore, and 50% of the dead PC's I get have broken power switches.

On old machines it is a common cause of failure, as is the PSU.

We are on each others list. :)
 
Sometimes a full battery out, cmos reset can bring 'dead' systems back to life too. Probably fixed a dozen PC's like that.

Disconnect ATX power, disconnect battery, use cmos clear jumper for good measure, wait 20 seconds, remove jumper, replace battery and ATX power, but turn on.

Its surprising how often that helps. Had the same with a Dell laptop, although it was much harder to get the cmos erased than a normal PC :)
 
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