PC won't boot, what steps to take?

JohnnyG · 25 Apr 2006 at 19:38

My mates PC won't boot so I said I'd have a look at it for him. He says the PSU powers up but there's no signal output etc.
His hdd is fine so I'm thinking cpu, memory, gpu or motherboard but what's the best way for me to find out what's gone?
I've got some memory I can try, but I haven't got a compatible cpu

Cerberous · 25 Apr 2006 at 20:10

It's just a matter or testing one thing at a time to try and pinpoint which peice of hardware is causing the problem. Try different PSU, RAM & CPU if you have any spares lying around.

I had a similar incident myself where my PC would not boot, I sourced the problem to my mobo which i replaced and it's now working absolutely fine.

May I ask what PSU he is using?

JohnnyG · 25 Apr 2006 at 20:17

I'm not sure what psu is in there as he's not bringing it round 'til Thursday, just wanted to be ahead of things

He says the psu fan powers up & there's a light on the front (power led?) so I don't think that's the problem.
I've got ram, memory & a gpu I can try, but is there any way of finding out if it's the cpu or motherboard if you haven't got a another one to try?

Defcon5 · 25 Apr 2006 at 21:11

JohnnyG said:
I'm not sure what psu is in there as he's not bringing it round 'til Thursday, just wanted to be ahead of things
He says the psu fan powers up & there's a light on the front (power led?) so I don't think that's the problem.
I've got ram, memory & a gpu I can try, but is there any way of finding out if it's the cpu or motherboard if you haven't got a another one to try?

What about turning it on and seeing which heasinks get hot? like if the nb gets hot but the cpu doesnt then the cpu is probably dead?