Odd PC Issue

rctneil · 20 Oct 2008 at 10:48

Hey,
I ahve been given a pc to try and fix and everytime it is switched on the monitor either stays blank or says "No Input Signal". I have tried 2 monitors and they both act the same when connected to this system so I thought it was the graphics card playing up. It has an AGP card in which I swapped for a spare one of mine which I know works and put that in and it still doesn't work. Any idea what could be the problem?

Thanks

Regards,
Neil

ExRayTed · 20 Oct 2008 at 13:28

Try swapping ram sticks about,if that doesn't work it's probably a dead motherboard / agp slot.

Skidilliplop · 20 Oct 2008 at 14:15

i have 3 questions,

1. Does it have onboard GFX aswell as an AGP slot?

2. Does everything other than the monitor appear normal when booting? fans spin, beeps, voltage on USB ports?

3. Have you tested the PSU in another machine or with a multimeter?

linktoinsanity · 20 Oct 2008 at 14:20

There's any number of things that could be at fault. Motherboard, CPU, RAM. Quite a difficult problem really. You seem to have tested both of the most likely things that could have gone wrong.

rctneil · 20 Oct 2008 at 15:48

The pc does have onboard graphics but the manufacturer placed a plastic cover over that port so users only use the separate graphics card so I unscrewed the cover and tried that port but to no avail. I don;t even know if onboard graphics is enabled. Let me go and test a different PSU in the machine

rctneil · 20 Oct 2008 at 16:07

Just tried a different PSU in the system and it still won;t do anything. All fans spin up, but there is no beep after powering on and as I can't get any output on the screen then I can;t really see where it is failing on POST. The monitor just stays on Standby and doesn;t get switched on the the system like it normally should. - It's a pretty old system so I think i'll reccomend the owners to get a new pc built for them as they will at least be able to get things running on it

Nitristion · 20 Oct 2008 at 16:10

Had the exact same problem with an old rig of mine, it was AGP too.

Fans spun, lights were on, but nothing on the screen. Same with a diff screen, and tried both with the onboard GFX to no avail.

I ended up finding it was both the Mobo and RAM that were dead. Don't know how or why it happened, but they were both gone. Everything else was fine though- PSU, HDD, sound card and GFX card all worked fine in a different rig.

Skidilliplop · 20 Oct 2008 at 16:12

rctneil said:
Just tried a different PSU in the system and it still won;t do anything. All fans spin up, but there is no beep after powering on and as I can't get any output on the screen then I can;t really see where it is failing on POST. The monitor just stays on Standby and doesn;t get switched on the the system like it normally should. - It's a pretty old system so I think i'll reccomend the owners to get a new pc built for them as they will at least be able to get things running on it

I'd agree, if it's old and it's quite evidently broken to the point it's going to take a considerable time and possible additional hardware to fix then I would like to coin a phrase used regularly by car insurance vendors and declare it "not economically viable to repair". Time and money would be better spent on a new build.