PC won't boot at all, no beep and no HDD light


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Hi guys, so I've a really old pc like 8 years old and for the last few months it just freezes and some weird lines appear on the monitor screen, and when I move or hit to CPU these line change their pattern or disappear and then it works fine after after rebooting.

 

So yesterday this happened again and this time the pc doesn't boots at all, The monitor says 'No Signal' there is no beep sound and no HDD light but the Power light is glowing fine. The keyboard & mouse are receiving Power and the fans are blowing too.

 

I opened up the PC to check and clean up and tried running it again but it still doesn't work. Can you guys help me tell what's the problem with my pc? Thanks.

 

It's a prebuilt so I don't know much  about it's hardware but it got a i3 1st gen, 10GB ram, No graphics card.

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What is your computer manufacturer, version? We can look it up :)

 

Try running on 1 RAM stick. I think this is a RAM issue. If not, we can try different things.

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20 minutes ago, Mindovermaster said:

What is your computer manufacturer, version? We can look it up :)

 

Try running on 1 RAM stick. I think this is a RAM issue. If not, we can try different things.

It's HCL, don't know about the version :(

 

I don't think RAM would be the problem because this was happening before I got another RAM stick. But I'll try with one stick tho.

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6 minutes ago, Piyush27 said:

It's HCL, don't know about the version :(

 

I don't think RAM would be the problem because this was happening before I got another RAM stick. But I'll try with one stick tho.

There should be a sticker on the back of the case that says what it is.

 

RAM can go bad. It happens. You didn't solve anything by adding that new RAM.

 

Edit: Also, what Windows OS do you have? 7, 8, 8.1, 10?

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2 hours ago, Mindovermaster said:

 

There should be a sticker on the back of the case that says what it is.

 

RAM can go bad. It happens. You didn't solve anything by adding that new RAM.

 

Edit: Also, what Windows OS do you have? 7, 8, 8.1, 10?

There is this number on the sticker - F2C-00409 (and other serial numbers)

 

I have Windows 10 Pro 64bit.

 

I've not tried removing the extra RAM sticks yet, I'll tell if it works or not. Thank you for helping!

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7 minutes ago, Piyush27 said:

There is this number on the sticker - F2C-00409 (and other serial numbers)

 

I have Windows 10 Pro 64bit.

 

I've not tried removing the extra RAM sticks yet, I'll tell if it works or not. Thank you for helping!

This a laptop?

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No beep, no post, formerly working pc....could be a very long list but I am going to go with Power supply or memory went bad.  Pull the memory out all but 1 stick, see if it causes it to beep or boot.  If you get a beep with no memory then its that, if not I would say power supply is not giving enough out. 

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13 minutes ago, DoctorD said:

No beep, no post, formerly working pc....could be a very long list but I am going to go with Power supply or memory went bad.  Pull the memory out all but 1 stick, see if it causes it to beep or boot.  If you get a beep with no memory then its that, if not I would say power supply is not giving enough out. 

Too late, bro 😛

 

But, yeah, RAM is the first hurdle. Let's see if he can jump it ;) 

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6 hours ago, Mindovermaster said:

Too late, bro 😛

 

But, yeah, RAM is the first hurdle. Let's see if he can jump it ;) 

Hey, you are often the first responder around here.

 

When running an emergency room, you should run down a checklist.

 

1. Gather precise info - you tried that

 

2. Old PC, acted weird for a while, stopped booting. So start with dust bunnies and dried out heat sink compound.

 

Then reseat the RAM and all plug-in cards.

 

Then pull and reseat all external connectors.

 

Then check all fans are actually spinning.

 

3. Record BIOS settings when possible, then reset CMOS and re-enter settings.

 

4. After all that it is appropriate to jump to possible hardware failure diagnosis, with RAM being possible.

 

5. On cheap old PCs, bad caps on mobo and particularly bad caps in PC PSU are likely and should be at least visually inspected.

 

For a bunch of stupid reasons, nobody wants to open a PSU, but in my experience 90% of these cheap old PSUs show bad caps as soon as you open and look at them. No need to touch anything inside, just look...

 

 

 

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8 years old... yeah PSU and RAM are the most likely, it is also possible the CMOS battery is dead, most of them are a watch battery like a CR2032, Have you cleaned the inside of the computer as in removed all the dust build up, dust alone can be a computer killer.

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17 hours ago, Mindovermaster said:

This a laptop?

Nope a Desktop PC

 

Hey, So it worked! I removed the old 2GB RAM stick and it worked.

 

There were two beeps one long and one short beep (with almost no interval between them). So the RAM was the problem but I'm kinda unsure because it randomly works sometimes lol.

 

Thank you

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10 hours ago, Piyush27 said:

Nope a Desktop PC

 

Hey, So it worked! I removed the old 2GB RAM stick and it worked.

 

There were two beeps one long and one short beep (with almost no interval between them). So the RAM was the problem but I'm kinda unsure because it randomly works sometimes lol.

 

Thank you

1. boot from memtest cd or usb

 

2. unplug and forcefully plug back in everything that possibly can be - in case something is a bit loose or corroded...

 

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11 hours ago, Piyush27 said:

So the RAM was the problem but I'm kinda unsure because it randomly works sometimes lol.

makes more sense then you would think. It will work as long as the computer doesn't try to access one of the bad sections on the RAM stick. Once you hit one of those bad sections that's when you get quirkiness/BSODs.

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32 minutes ago, Brandon H said:

makes more sense then you would think. It will work as long as the computer doesn't try to access one of the bad sections on the RAM stick. Once you hit one of those bad sections that's when you get quirkiness/BSODs.

He should confirm the bad RAM with a memory test.

 

So far, his symptoms are also consistent with bumping a loose connection every time he opens his case...

 

Note: he is getting failure to BOOT, which is not really in the area of hitting just the wrong RAM location...

 

 

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  • 1 month later...
On 2/7/2019 at 3:22 AM, Piyush27 said:

Nope a Desktop PC

 

Hey, So it worked! I removed the old 2GB RAM stick and it worked.

 

There were two beeps one long and one short beep (with almost no interval between them). So the RAM was the problem but I'm kinda unsure because it randomly works sometimes lol.

 

Thank you

 

It's called RANDOM Access Memory for a reason :) As in it will randomly kill your computer.

 

Edited by conna
words are hard sometimes
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