Its one of thsoe hard to pin down problems

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My son's pc has developed an issue. It fails to appear to boot. By that, i mean, on switch on, there is now display on the monitor. The monitor just shows "No Signal". Now i have tried another monitor and taht did same thing. So i thought maybe it was the Motehrbaord or CPU. Tried CPU in another motherboard and thats fine. (just to be sure i have tried the Graphics card in anotehr pc and that worked).
So its the motherboard, or so i thought. Today while testing teh PC displayed a Graphics card boot and then the bios Post screen and then boots to windows. I turn it off, and now it wont display anything again. Now listening to the HDD that wirrs away like it does on boot and teh system actually sounds liek its booting even though i cant see that. And every now and then it does teh same thing, it will display teh BIOS info and boot but more often it wont display anything.

So what is teh cause? Memeory, CPu and Graphics card have been use in another PC, i can test the motherboard unless i strip it right down, but i can test the PSU in anotehr pc in case thats it. But it seems intermittent so anything i do may make it work for awhile and then it will stop again. Anyone any sugestions on this? His cpu and mobo are socket 939 AMD so could replace both, but i want to be sure what is wrong before i do that.

 

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perhaps the dvi port is knackered, maybe it's one of those things that if you wiggle it about enough you'll get a contact and the monitor will display what it should.

Maybe a newer connector might help or if your pluggin it into a graphics card try the other port if it has one or another graphics card.

 

Could be the VGA/DVI cable that is at fault, when you tried a new monitor was it the same cable?

When it does boot, check the bios and windows event logs, maybe something in there can help find the problem.

 

Watt is the power of your PSU...
Put a bigger one in and see if you still get those intermittent problems.

Do you get clues about anything else in Event Viewer?

 

looking at it i think its either the DVI cable or a dodgy connector on teh back of teh graphics card. Teh card does have 2 connectors and it seems to work more often on one than teh other, but it is hard to tell. Will swap a cable in teh morning as i have no spare DVI cables, thier all in use on my many pcs lol.

 

Why not swap the suspect cable with a known good cable in one of your other pc's, if the fault follows the cable, problem solved, if the faults stays with the system then back to the drawing board.

 

What he said...but then, if you *also* have a dodgy connector on the card...

 

The symptoms are very similar to what i have seen with faulty capacitors on the motherboard

 

Yikes - spooky. Currently sat in my mancave re-soldering some caps onto a couple of shabby little Netscreen gig switches. Its a known fault with the model I have, apparently - GS108 - whereby they use capacitors with a dielectric probably made out rice or something stupid

Netgear refused to RMA me replacement switches because I stupidly told them I'd popped the case to confirm it was the capacitors that had blown. I'm considering threatening them with legal action - there is no warning label on the case that says warranty is automatically voided if the lid is opened - normally I wouldn't bother, but they're being especially s***ty with me - especially since this is a known issue and all I've done by opening the case to confirm its the capacitors is do their work for them. Also, our support contract for workgroup switches is up in February and we'll be getting new ones in. We currently use Netgear - guess what we WON'T be using come February?

Sorry to hijack your thread twiz

 

Already thought of that, specially as i spent most of my last job replacing caps on mobos. but none on this one look blown or bulging so have to assume for now that thier ok.

As for teh cable being an issue, i have tried wiggling it and it doenst seem to cause it to lose signal to the monitor, nor does wiggling teh connector end make any difference. Will continue to investigate, but my lad played on his pc for a few hours last night with no problems.

 

I'd go for mobo failure as well on initial thought - the chance of a mobo "just going" is higher than a cable "just going".

Not just that, if you leave the whole PC alone (ie, physically don't move it at all and only touch to power on) and then the reboots fail/ok to show, as you haven't touched the cable, I'd be suprised if that was the point of failure.

Failing that, try the cable on the other PC too??

 

well swapped the cable over for a known good one, and the problems seemed to have gone. However, it hasnt transfered with the cable to the other pc.

Have boot my son's pc a few times and it hasnt seemed to fail since doing this. I've put his cable on my pc and booted mine several times and thats not failed either, so its eitehr a combination of teh card / cable or its something else altogther.

 

Would be a good time to check the event logs in bios and os if the machine is booting.

 

grrrrrr!!! These issues bug me

 

well started teh pc for teh first time today, and guess what? it booted and works fine, all displaying on the monitor fine.
Wiggling cable and connector makes no difference its all ok. grrrrrrrrrrrrrr

 

Count it as one of life's little blessings for now. As has been suggested (just in case you haven't done so yet), check all the available logs to see if anything useful about the problem has been recorded. Maybe you can solve this thing before the computer decides to puke again.