Urgent : Computer Won't Boot Up

marka87uk · 1 May 2006 at 18:59

Was using it and it froze, so I rebooted, and now, nothing. :eek:

The monitor light is flashing so I guess it's not receiving anything. The fans spin up and I think so does the hard drive; but before where they would spin up, then down, then you could hear the hard drive spinning up; now they just stay on. Nothing from the hard drive activity light. The error reporting on the mobo is showing FF... all manuals etc are in the loft but I seem to recall that meaning everything was ok, or everything had failed.

Any ideas? I have a lot of data on the drive I really need to get back and I think it's more of a hardware issue such as the mobo. I don't even have any other hardware I can try.

RobH · 1 May 2006 at 19:24

I think your hard drive would be fine, you can always stick that in another machine and get the data off. The fact that your not even getting the system to boot is the problem.

If I recall correctly, the code 'FF' means that the system is booting so everything should be fine, I assume it always shows FF during boot and you can't normally see it.

First step would be to pull out ll non-essential components and see if you can at least get the POST up on screen. This includes all expansion cards (except video of course), all hard drives, optical drives, USB/Firewire devices. If you get it to POST then you can start adding things back in until it fails. If that doesn't work, it may be worth trying a different video card.

xirokx · 1 May 2006 at 19:24

so fans are spins, lights are appearing for components etc...

May just be your monitor has died?

I know you dont have any additional parts however try a diff monitor to rule that out...

Meanwhile whats the wattage on your PSU?

Dont worry about your hdd cuz if it had died then the system would boot up on screen and then just fail as it would not be able to load windows....

VeNT · 1 May 2006 at 19:27

could be
motherboard,
ram
processor
PSU
or all of em

xirokx · 1 May 2006 at 19:31

could be
motherboard,
ram
processor
PSU
or all of em

hmmm yes but where would u begin

VeNT · 1 May 2006 at 19:32

xirokx said:
hmmm yes but where would u begin

with whatever I have spair, or two of in the system
so the ram
but it sounds more like motherboard to me

marka87uk · 1 May 2006 at 19:59

Thanks for the help, as I said I have no other hardware to test with and my SATA HD won't be supported on the other computer in my house... but, for some strange reason it's working again! :confused:

I disconnected the HD, booted up and "hmm, it's actually booting up and asking for a disk...?!" ... so I shut down again, connected up the HD (praying that it wasn't the HD which had somehow died), and it booted up as normal! Just backed all my stuff up (phew), and it seems 'normal'. I'm thinking the mobo fan or some other fan is more noisy than usual but could be because I have the case apart!

Anyway, thanks.

VeNT · 1 May 2006 at 20:34

ok,
it sounds like an issue I had with my Exs pc
it ended up that it was the fan, the 4pin molex connector was realy bad and caused issues with the power supply to the CDROM/Hard disk, so because they didn't have enough power to run properly the motherboard couldn't get replys from em etc, dissconected the fans and it works every time!