Computer fails to boot.
This is a pretty new machine. (ie a couple of months old).
I didn't buy it as one unit, it is the result of a rebuild. It's the preverbial grandfather's axe though.
It was working fine after the rebuild then last week it had difficulty starting (ie booting up). Needed a few restarts (warm reboots). Then nothing.
Monitor is ok and working.
Only once has it managed to get to the BIOS page on the monitor.
Usually nothing.
Old bits.
HD. Seagate 20Gb U10 ST320423A. About 4 years old. Had no probs with it. Now partitioned into 3 drives. It's on IDE #1, master.
Monitor. Hitachi 17". 4 years old too. No dramas
DVD drive.
CD burner.
Both have worked just fine.
New bits. Bought in Oct last year. (Computer rebuilt because of a strange noise. Ended up being the power supply fan)
Mobo.
MSI KT4AV (FCC MS6712 Ver:10A) Had trouble with it before, already been to the shop once.
RAM. VM512Mb DDR PC133
Video card. MSI FX5200 128Mb (FCC 8907 Ver:2.00)
New case and power supply. Suntek 300W approved for AMD and Pentium CPU's.
CPU. AMD Athlon XP 2100+ 1.76Ghz. (slightly overclocked by the bios to 1.8Ghz) Mastercooler fan.
Crappy internal Intel modem. hate the thing, temporary measure.
OS. Windows XP Service pack 2.
Today I did some more trouble shooting. I disconnected the HD and the CD drives as well as the FD from the mobo. (ie, mobo, CPU, memory and graphics card only) I also removed the HD and tried to gently flex it to see if that would help.
Nothing appeared on the monitor. (Fans whirred away, LED's glowed etc)
I unseated the memory. No beeps.
I unseated the video card. No beeps.
In fact, no beeps (expect a single beep upon start) at all.
Reseated every thing, reconnected every thing. Nothing to the monitor at all. Occassionally, the monitor LED changes colour (as you'd expect if a signal was being sent) but that goes back to the standby colour in a short time.
When I turn it on, various fans whir and the FD (very old) seems to be trying to read something (nothing in the drive) and that's all that happens.
Now, I am not a computer genius but it's looking like either the HD has crashed or it's looking more likely the mobo has decided to die again.
Surfed the net for clues, bought mags with self help instructions too. Nothing has worked.