PC not booting and no noise

[55Jay]

Well two separate techs told me to clean the RAM connection.

Sent from my GT-S5360B using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

Did you get it going again?

Along with power cable removal, doing a RAM brush often does the trick, except for my last one.

Lugged the CPU down to the tech shop, he did above quick fixes, no joy. Mother board was toast.

[Pib]

Well two separate techs told me to clean the RAM connection.

Sent from my GT-S5360B using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

Machines are all different, but usually you don't even have to have an RAM installed for the computer to attempt boot up for a few seconds...basically the BIOS screen appearing for a few seconds before the machine would hang-up/start beeping at you/etc. But it should start beeping at you right off the bat unless their is a major failure.

Around 10 days ago my laptop quit working...actually it died when shutting it down at night and I noticed a strange flash on the screen and decided to turn it back on to ensure it was OK. I wasn't OK...absolutely no display, no beeps, hard drive would spin for a few seconds and then go quite, no CPU fan, just had silence and a few indicate lights with or without the main battery and whether on power line only or on battery only. Having upgraded/played with/fixed quite a few person and work computers, desktops and laptops, over the years I tried several things just to see if I could at least get the initial BIOS boot-up display for a few seconds...just any brief display. I tried removing/replacing the hard drive, tried removing one or both RAM chips, nothing made a difference.

When I first took it to the shop one of the first things the technician did was remove all RAM to see if that would at least allow a BIOS boot display...it didn't...he then removed the hard drive with the same result...he tried the stuff I tried...and I hadn't told him what I had tried. Anyway, when the dust settled and I got my repaired laptop back in 2 days for Bt3000...the problem was failed chip on the motherboard which they replaced.

Now my 7 year old Toshiba laptop hopefully has more years of life and is transmitting this post. And my urge for a new laptop is quickly fading as I really can't find one I "really" like....I think me and my current Toshiba laptop will stay married for a while longer...she's been a good girl so far.

[Jiu-Jitsu]

Well two separate techs told me to clean the RAM connection.

Sent from my GT-S5360B using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

Now my 7 year old Toshiba laptop hopefully has more years of life and is transmitting this post. And my urge for a new laptop is quickly fading as I really can't find one I "really" like....I think me and my current Toshiba laptop will stay married for a while longer...she's been a good girl so far.

Seven years old? What model number? PS***-*****?

[Jingthing]

Egg on my face ... in a good way ...

I wasn't taking the pull out the plug idea seriously and didn't bother until just now.

It didn't make sense to me how that was different than just power off.

Anyway, did that, and turned on and BOOT city.

This is the weird part.

It wasn't a normal boot. It started resuming windows and took several minutes to do so, no logon needed, all the pages from before had to load.

Never saw that before on a reboot.

To the question as to why I was thinking about a new computer, yes I have experienced some glitches of late. I guess the unit is about 3 or 4 years old. A few months ago I had to reinstall windows. Anyway, I'm in no rush if it can keep working but I also won't be surprised if it goes kaput tomorrow.

Anyway, for now at least it's back again, and I'm very grateful for the ideas here and I'll know more the next time something like this happens, which of course it will.

Cheers!

Edited November 4, 2013 by Jingthing

[robblok]

Sounds like the computer entered a sleep mode and yuo so called power off did not do a thing. This is possible because if you want to close a computer that is frozen for some reason you need t press the power off button long almost 10 seconds.

So your computer just stayed in sleep mode.

At least that is my guess.

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[Jiu-Jitsu]

If the problem was just the hard drive you would still be able to boot off a 'Live Disc'.

[Jingthing]

That makes perfect sense. Don't recall that ever happening to me in decades on computing.

[KittenKong]

I wasn't taking the pull out the plug idea seriously and didn't bother until just now.

It didn't make sense to me how that was different than just power off.

Anyway, did that, and turned on and BOOT city.

It's worth remembering that one as in my experience it is fairly common. It happened to my dentist's PC once back in Europe when I was sitting in the chair and I was able to tell him what do to get it working again.

And did he give me a discount? The #&^! he did. I should have billed him for the repair.

You subsequent restore issue sounds normal enough.

[Somtamnication]

Tons of replies. Any ending to this story? Did he end up buying a new comp?

[Pib]

Well two separate techs told me to clean the RAM connection.

Sent from my GT-S5360B using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

Now my 7 year old Toshiba laptop hopefully has more years of life and is transmitting this post. And my urge for a new laptop is quickly fading as I really can't find one I "really" like....I think me and my current Toshiba laptop will stay married for a while longer...she's been a good girl so far.

Seven years old? What model number? PS***-*****?

Yeap, it's got that model numbering scheme. Heck, I got "two" 7 year old Toshiba laptops...one had that recent failure and the other never has failed but I've used it a lot less. I also personally replaced the keyboard ($13 from Ebay) about a year ago on the one that had the recently failed only because the "S" key required more pressure than normal but it still worked. I call one my "4 cylinder computer" since it has a less horsepower with only a Celeron CPU in it...it use to be used primarily by the wife for watching video and I now use it as my backup/spare computer. And the other one I refer to as my 8 cylinder computer since its got a Pentium Core Duo CPU in it. Seven years ago the Pentium Core Duo chip was near the top of laptop chips, but now as time and technology marched on it would be considered a low end (4 cylinder) CPU. But from me playing with a lot of I7, I5, and I3 CPU powered new laptops over the last week its once again been reinforced in me that although "benchmark-wise" either of those three newer CPUs blows away my old Pentium CPU, in "real-life" use for browsing, emailing, word processing, video streaming/YouTubing, just basic computering which is about all I do...nothing CPU/GPU-intensive like converting video files, playing games, etc...there is very little perceived speed difference and zero perceived speed difference in some cases. Yeap, benchmarks sells new computers and makes bleeding-edge folks feel satisfied/proud (I use to be one of those bleeding-edge folks but got treatment), but for basic everyday common computering tasks the old CPU still hold up very well against the new CPUs. My two 7 year old Toshiba Satellite A100/A105 laptops have been good and reliable...knock on wood...and my 8 cylinder laptop is proudly making this post.

[Pib]

Egg on my face ... in a good way ...

I wasn't taking the pull out the plug idea seriously and didn't bother until just now.

It didn't make sense to me how that was different than just power off.

Anyway, did that, and turned on and BOOT city.

This is the weird part.

It wasn't a normal boot. It started resuming windows and took several minutes to do so, no logon needed, all the pages from before had to load.

Never saw that before on a reboot.

To the question as to why I was thinking about a new computer, yes I have experienced some glitches of late. I guess the unit is about 3 or 4 years old. A few months ago I had to reinstall windows. Anyway, I'm in no rush if it can keep working but I also won't be surprised if it goes kaput tomorrow.

Anyway, for now at least it's back again, and I'm very grateful for the ideas here and I'll know more the next time something like this happens, which of course it will.

Cheers!

By chance, had the computer just downloaded/installed a major Windows update (if you run Windows)?

About a year ago, after my laptop had completed downloading/installing a major Windows update...and it mean this auto update was a lot bigger and took much longer to install that normal...when the Windows turned off the computer after completing the install, the computer would not turn back on. I wanted to turn the computer on to ensure everything was fine since this was such a l....o.....n.....g, massive Windows update.

Well, my computer would not turn-on. Absolutely zero indicator light...light the power button lights...no activity...no display...nothing. I tried pressing the power button several more times. When it's in standby or hibernation mode that power light will flash orange and when full powered up its a solid blue....there was no light at all. I'm thinking to myself how in the world could the Windows update just kill my computer....I mean totally dead. OK, it was running off adapter power...so I tried it just on battery power....didn't help. Then I decided to remove the battery and put it back in as I remember some IBM laptops having such problems years back. Anyway, once reinserting the battery, it powered up no problem. I did so googling over the next week to see if any other folks in internet land had had similar problems to me right after this major Windows update and sure enough I ran across a half dozen or so posts on various brands of computers who had had the exact same problem.

Strange issue....computers can do strange things sometimes...and when combined with strange users the issues can become strange and somewhat comical sometimes. I guess that is one reason whenever you call tech support for most any powered device the first thing they want you to do is power off the device, unplug it from the wall, and maybe uninstall/reinstall the battery if it has one as some electronic devices (i.e., computers, modems, routers, smartphones, etc) can just get so confused electronically they lock themselves up really tight and it takes a complete removal of all power sources for 15 seconds or more to get them running again. So, that is something I always do now knowing that "sometimes" it fixes the problem.

[Jiu-Jitsu]

Well two separate techs told me to clean the RAM connection.

Sent from my GT-S5360B using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

Now my 7 year old Toshiba laptop hopefully has more years of life and is transmitting this post. And my urge for a new laptop is quickly fading as I really can't find one I "really" like....I think me and my current Toshiba laptop will stay married for a while longer...she's been a good girl so far.

Seven years old? What model number? PS***-*****?

Yeap, it's got that model numbering scheme.

I know...what are the numbers(of both of them)?

[Jingthing]

Tons of replies. Any ending to this story? Did he end up buying a new comp?

No. It's working.

Sent from my GT-S5360B using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

[Pib]

PSAA9U-06P020 and PSAA2U-05803P. The first two digits after the dash represent the year of manufacture, which means my 8 cyclinder laptop is 7 years old and a little bit of surprise to me my 4 cylinder laptop is 8 years old...I thought it was only 7 years old but my memory cells are now telling me I did buy it a little before my other laptop. Why do you want to know the numbers?-- Got some spare parts you want to mail me?. But the way my Toshiba laptops are hanging in there I probably wouldn't need the parts. Toshiba was making good hardware back then; hopefully they still are.

[h90]

You do not get any beeps, then it means the motherboard or cpu. Those two have to work to get any post (power on self test) beeps.

Usual power supply failure entails the ps shutting off without any notice.

If it was ram failure, you should get a certain amount of beeps (1 long and 3 short beeps for AMI bios).

You have grounded outlets at your home?

could be also graphic card, Ram or powersupply.

It should do some beeps....but in many cases it does not.

[Somtamnication]

Would love to know the solution from the OP.

[Pib]

Would love to know the solution from the OP.

Post #34 shows the OP got the computer working again.

[transam]

I had the same problems. It was a Windows ''copy'" and a dodgy hard drive . Now have genuine W7 in a new 1tb and nooooooooo probs.

[Jingthing]

Would love to know the solution from the OP.

[transam]

Would love to know the solution from the OP.

ok.jpg

I had one of those anti-surge thingy extension leads with it all plugged in. the lead did what your pic shows with no surge.

Edited November 5, 2013 by transam

[Somtamnication]

Ahh, missed it.

[Briandajew]

even without a drive or a broken drive the BIOS should show up on the screen (as mentioned by Pib already).

Indeed.

one possibility is that the PC is running but the screen is broken or the cable disconnected.

If this was so the POST beeps would still be audible, and apparently they are not.

none of my PCs beep.

Then you probably haven't bothered to install the little speaker that comes with you motherboard - All PC's beep when correctly setup - that is how you diagnose the boot problems!

[Briandajew]

Open the case, (after power off, remove all connectors to Hard Drives or disk Drives, remove all of the RAM except on slot - check you MB manuall to see which is the first one selected to boot - check your MB manual and see if you have the ability to short out the CMOS jumpers, normally, you can just lift a little interconnect from your CMOS BIOS and put them into another position that will reset BIOS/CMOS - make sure you unplug completely from the mains for at least 10 minutes or do to allow any residual power to dissipate.

Only connect the main C drive, along with the 1 piece of RAM

Connect your jumper back to the correct setting for CMOS/bios and then reconnect the power - switch it on and wait for the beep! Unless it has died a terrible death, it will probably fire up - I have had this problem a few times with a pretty new ASUS model and if it does not fire up on reboot it looks like it is dead and just sits there doing nothing except blowing the fans.

If it boots from here, power off - (remove the mains cable - wait 5 minutes then connect one more device, i.e one more slot of RAM, or one more hard drive, just keep repeating this until you find the culprit - it is probably nothing, just some stupid hang up or conflict - you will probably end up with everything reconnected and scratching your head as to what went wrong in the first place!

[Briandajew]

I had something similiar happen years ago on A desktop.My hard drive was done.Take it to A computer shop

Best awnser so far. I have repaired many computers before.. You could know by bios beeps what was wrong and such. But computer shops have spare parts they can switch to see if it is truly what they think it is. It probably wont be too expensive.. depending on what is broken.

even without a drive or a broken drive the BIOS should show up on the screen (as mentioned by Pib already). one possibility is that the PC is running but the screen is broken or the cable disconnected.

You would still expect to get either the one BEEP on the correct BIOS loading or the three Beeps if there was a ram problem..or all of the other types of error beeps providing you bothered to connect the little piezo speaker supplied with you motherboard to help in determining the problem..then again, he could have suffered a motherboard failure along with RAM, CPU and the audio...what are the odds on that one?

[Pib]

When my laptop died about two weeks ago (now repaired) there were no beeps because the motherboard had a major failure (i.e., one of the motherboard chips died)....it was like trying to start a car without a battery. The beeping thing only works for certain faults.

[sirchai]

His PC works fine again.Tiny little ghosts had occupied the CPU .-