I bought my dad a brand new barebones computer about a week ago. We put it together, installed Vista and it's been working fine. Until today that is.

He calls me at work and tells me it doesn't do anything when you push the power button. Nothing. No fans, nothing. So I get off work and I'm trying to figure it out.

Upon first inspection I notice the power LED on the motherboard is lit. I press the button, nothing happens.

I disconnect everything short of the essentials. I've got a motherboard, CPU, RAM, and a power supply hooked up in the case. Again I press the button, nothing happens.

I attempt to clear the BIOS using the appropriate jumper. It won't power with the jumper set either.

I remove the essential components from the case and set them up on top of an anti-static bag. Again I press the button, nothing happens.

I attempt to power my computer using my father's power supply. Nothing. It appears the supply is faulty. But why do the lights on the motherboard come on?

I test the power supply by itself by bridging the power on (green) and a ground cable (black). The fan on the power supply starts up. I connect a fan via one of the molex connectors. It powers up as well.

Strange. Does it work or not? What the hell is going on with this thing?

I take the power supply out of my personal computer and attempt to power my dad's computer and I still get nothing.

It's at this point that my dad is getting up for work so we're discussing the problem and our options. He tells me the last thing he did was a system update. The system finished installing the update and rebooted. Then he shut it down and he hasn't been able to power up since. He also mentions that when it was rebooting that he caught a brief glimpse of some garbage characters on the screen but Vista proceeded to boot anyway.

So at this point I'm thinking the power supply and the motherboard are completely fucked. But the garbage characters are throwing me for a loop. Can a faulty CPU prevent a system from powering on? I wouldn't think so. It won't POST but it should at least power on.

I dunno. I think I'm just going to exchange everything. I can't be bothered to dick around exchanging each component till I end up with a working computer. And I'll be damned if I can say with certainty what components are faulty.

Man. This shit pisses me off. He's on a battery backup too so I have no idea how this happened. :lol:

maybe the power switch isn't bridging the connection to power on the power supply. When you tried the power supply on your computer, what case switch did you use?

-Edit-

Nevermind, just read how you took it out of your personal computer.

1 in 100 components break in the first week of use or are DOA. That's the sad figure of reality.
Considering the amount of components in a PC the chances of something failing rises exponentially with each component. At the end of the day, 1 in about 50 of the new A-Brand PC's that we deliver to customers are DOA for some reason or another (faulty construction, transport damages etc..etc..).

I think it's up to the dealer to test new systems and components, but many don't want to invest that time and money so they'll just wait for the customers to return and complain, it's cheaper and some never go back to complain. Who's at fault here? Very certainly the store where you bought it from, they know the DOA percentages better than anybody, and with a good service setup this kind of thing shouldn't have to end up in your lap.

But, this is not a DOA per se, as you said, the PC was running before. So it could be anything, from a small surge on the powergrid to static interference, once when I was rigging up my system a fan was blowing into my eyes, needless to say I was getting a bit teary, no problem until a drop of water ended up in the CPU casing as I was wiping it away. Didn't notice, turned on the PC and poof, gone was the CPU.

Last week when one of our system builders was fixing a machine he took off the CPU and in between the cooling gel and the cpu there was a mummified gnat.

This kind of stuff sadly, just happens.

very possible the PSU got partly fried & so did the MB. Happened to me once: small power surge (no clue why), messed with mb & psu. I replaced the MB (initially thought it was the problem) worked then had power issues. Replaced PSU. MB died again. New MB must of been damaged by bad PSU & then the new PSU got killed. So I replaced both again (MB was under warranty anyway, so it was free), then everything was fine.

I've had where the light on the MB would come on but nothing would happen when you pushed the power button. Turns out the PSU was bad, power was getting to the light but nothing else. First thing I'd do is replace the switch. Should be a few $$ at radio shack. Just get the right kind.

Then try your PSU. Then the old PSU.

We had a similar problem, the power supply borked up and it prevented most parts of the mobo (and therein) to stop operating, while other parts _were_ operating, like the light on the internal modem. It was as if the mobo could detect the faulty PSU, but still _some_ power was getting through. I'm still a little confused about it to this day:-
http://www.devhardware.com/forums/power-supply-units-98/power-supply-damaged-74396.html
Good place to ask for help too, anyway, and good luck!

You see, I was just going to say, "There's a reason why people prefer consoles." Though, I just remembered that not too long ago, our Xbox 360 had the infamous Red Ring of Death. Not only that, but that Red Ring of Death just so happens to be associated with technology. Oh, wait. Robots are also associated with technology. Do you see where I'm going with this? Ah, yes! Robots taking over the world. That's right - Afterall, computers aren't all around faulty and--... Wait, what's that? Pull the plug and... Whammo! Bam! Zip! That's it. End of the story.

Though, I hate computers. And consoles (or, at least, Xbox 360s). And switching it to the news.

On your subject, since I've trailed far off, I must say that I've only a few remote solutions.
1) Push a bunch of key combinations when the light comes on.
2) Hold the power button and cross your fingers.
3) Swear a lot and buy a little bit of dynamite for the inevitable deconstruction of the computer.
4) Put your computer in your father's computer's place and chant, "Tadaa!"
5) Refund? (Unless it came from the black market. Don't ask for refunds, there.)
6) Warranty? (Unless it came from aliens from Outer Space, Rated PG-13.)
7) Plug the computer in someplace else.
8) If you built it from scratch, then don't apply to number nine.
9) Call the computer's manufacturer (or company? Whichever one it is.) and troubleshoot.
10) Call me! I can find you just the right sledgehammer. For free, too!
11) Attempt cutting it in half perfectly with a wakizashi.
12) Troubleshot.

If none of the above apply, then... I'm not sure what to say!
I hate computers. It's a nightmare trying to figure out what's the source of the problem, especially in an age like this. Hell, even rocket science is easier. Afterall, rocket science is nothing but putting rocket fuel in a water bottle and starting a fire axe on fire (irony!) and trying to play baseball with it. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know how to do that!" Yes, but it does take a brainless pyromaniac to figure out how to re-assemble alien technology during an assault from Russia's amazing nuclear flatulence.

KoRnScythe wrote:

You see, I was just going to say, "There's a reason why people prefer consoles." Though, I just remembered that not too long ago, our Xbox 360 had the infamous Red Ring of Death. Not only that, but that Red Ring of Death just so happens to be associated with technology. Oh, wait. Robots are also associated with technology. Do you see where I'm going with this? Ah, yes! Robots taking over the world. That's right - Afterall, computers aren't all around faulty and--... Wait, what's that? Pull the plug and... Whammo! Bam! Zip! That's it. End of the story.

Maybe you should stick with something simpler then, TV's and DVD players these days are pretty simple to operate. :mrgreen:

I have a problem with this post. People expect way too much these days from technology. To think that such intricate technology will work 'out of the box' is a pipe dream, perpetuated by the marketing machines of Dell, HP, IBM and other such companies. Technology such as computers are not simple, nor are operating systems. People should stop believing the marketing hypes (and science fiction movies where one replaces a 'crystal' and it works) and should look at where we really are in terms of technology: The stone age.

For computers, that's where we are, the stone-age.

Just 20 years ago, nobody worked with computers, now everybody has one. We will have a long, long, loooooong way to go before we get technology that always works, is stable, and is always simple to troubleshoot.

It's just like cars; a computer is an intricate and difficult machine to troubleshoot and people should leave it to professionals instead of tinkering themselves. But when a computer is broken they go 'it's so hard it's such a bad technology; it's HP's fault, it's MS's fault blah blah'...
But when a car breaks down, everybody knows you should take it to the garage. A mentality change should happen on all fronts, the press, the distributors but mostly with consumers.

I used to build my own PC's, now I've given up on that, simply because there are too many dependencies to take note of when building a machine (especially when building a gaming machine).

I've (still) got a sort of same problem unsolved, but i discovered an alternative...
I turn my pc on, but nothing happen except the MB and alim turn on. (and so lights are on, but no HD, screen or PCIE)
Then, after around 10 minutes, i reset... and then the PC start like nothing happened...

Maybe the psu blew the ram. PSU spikes are the most common reason for broken ram. Broken ram can allow the fans and lights to run, but nothing else (even no error beeps). So run your good psu with the mobo and GPU and CPU, but no ram. If you get beeps, you can deduce the ram is borked.

request an RMA from manufacturer

bad cpu's cause no video, so it's not a cpu problem, most likely it's a motherboard failure. lights can turn on, but that means nothing, there is way more that can go wrong than lights going out. the power supply is still a probable cause, but you may never know unless you go buy one of those power supply testers, I think they run $20. you just plug them into a device that confirms that it's being supplied the proper separate voltages and tells you if it's good or bad. But if not, I would safely replace(rma) the motherboard if you have a warranty with it. and if that doesn't do it, rma the power supply.

I bought this system online via CompUSA (who was recently bought out by TigerDirect) and I've been told over the phone that I can take everything to CompUSA and do an exchange on the spot. So I'll be boxing everything back up and attempting to exchange it tomorrow. We'll see how that goes.

I could try just exchanging the motherboard and PSU but at this point it's probably safe to say that one failed and damaged the other in the process. And given the implied domino effect, other components may have been compromised as well so I might as well replace everything to be safe.

Jack Rammsdell wrote:

... go buy one of those power supply testers ...

The irony here is that I was pondering buying one of those testers the day before the computer died. I was out in search of an internal SD card reader when I saw one and thought ...

"Oh. Well look at that. That's a lot easier than screwing around with a multimeter. But I'll never use it."

I usually just use a spare power supply for testing purposes, if you have one.

Sure if you mean spare as in "taken out of my own personal computer". Of course, I have other "spares" but they're too old to be of much use since newer systems use 24 pin connectors.

The problem is solved for now though. I've exchanged everything and rebuilt it. We'll see how things are in a week.

I bought my dad a brand new barebones computer about a week ago. We put it together, installed Vista and it's been working fine. Until today that is.

He calls me at work and tells me it doesn't do anything when you push the power button. Nothing. No fans, nothing. So I get off work and I'm trying to figure it out.

Upon first inspection I notice the power LED on the motherboard is lit. I press the button, nothing happens.

I disconnect everything short of the essentials. I've got a motherboard, CPU, RAM, and a power supply hooked up in the case. Again I press the button, nothing happens.

I attempt to clear the BIOS using the appropriate jumper. It won't power with the jumper set either.

I remove the essential components from the case and set them up on top of an anti-static bag. Again I press the button, nothing happens.

I attempt to power my computer using my father's power supply. Nothing. It appears the supply is faulty. But why do the lights on the motherboard come on?

I test the power supply by itself by bridging the power on (green) and a ground cable (black). The fan on the power supply starts up. I connect a fan via one of the molex connectors. It powers up as well.

Strange. Does it work or not? What the hell is going on with this thing?

I take the power supply out of my personal computer and attempt to power my dad's computer and I still get nothing.

It's at this point that my dad is getting up for work so we're discussing the problem and our options. He tells me the last thing he did was a system update. The system finished installing the update and rebooted. Then he shut it down and he hasn't been able to power up since. He also mentions that when it was rebooting that he caught a brief glimpse of some garbage characters on the screen but Vista proceeded to boot anyway.

So at this point I'm thinking the power supply and the motherboard are completely fucked. But the garbage characters are throwing me for a loop. Can a faulty CPU prevent a system from powering on? I wouldn't think so. It won't POST but it should at least power on.

I dunno. I think I'm just going to exchange everything. I can't be bothered to dick around exchanging each component till I end up with a working computer. And I'll be damned if I can say with certainty what components are faulty.

Man. This shit pisses me off. He's on a battery backup too so I have no idea how this happened. :lol:

maybe the power switch isn't bridging the connection to power on the power supply. When you tried the power supply on your computer, what case switch did you use?

-Edit-

Nevermind, just read how you took it out of your personal computer.

1 in 100 components break in the first week of use or are DOA. That's the sad figure of reality.
Considering the amount of components in a PC the chances of something failing rises exponentially with each component. At the end of the day, 1 in about 50 of the new A-Brand PC's that we deliver to customers are DOA for some reason or another (faulty construction, transport damages etc..etc..).

I think it's up to the dealer to test new systems and components, but many don't want to invest that time and money so they'll just wait for the customers to return and complain, it's cheaper and some never go back to complain. Who's at fault here? Very certainly the store where you bought it from, they know the DOA percentages better than anybody, and with a good service setup this kind of thing shouldn't have to end up in your lap.

But, this is not a DOA per se, as you said, the PC was running before. So it could be anything, from a small surge on the powergrid to static interference, once when I was rigging up my system a fan was blowing into my eyes, needless to say I was getting a bit teary, no problem until a drop of water ended up in the CPU casing as I was wiping it away. Didn't notice, turned on the PC and poof, gone was the CPU.

Last week when one of our system builders was fixing a machine he took off the CPU and in between the cooling gel and the cpu there was a mummified gnat.

This kind of stuff sadly, just happens.

very possible the PSU got partly fried & so did the MB. Happened to me once: small power surge (no clue why), messed with mb & psu. I replaced the MB (initially thought it was the problem) worked then had power issues. Replaced PSU. MB died again. New MB must of been damaged by bad PSU & then the new PSU got killed. So I replaced both again (MB was under warranty anyway, so it was free), then everything was fine.

I've had where the light on the MB would come on but nothing would happen when you pushed the power button. Turns out the PSU was bad, power was getting to the light but nothing else. First thing I'd do is replace the switch. Should be a few $$ at radio shack. Just get the right kind.

Then try your PSU. Then the old PSU.

We had a similar problem, the power supply borked up and it prevented most parts of the mobo (and therein) to stop operating, while other parts _were_ operating, like the light on the internal modem. It was as if the mobo could detect the faulty PSU, but still _some_ power was getting through. I'm still a little confused about it to this day:-
http://www.devhardware.com/forums/power-supply-units-98/power-supply-damaged-74396.html
Good place to ask for help too, anyway, and good luck!

You see, I was just going to say, "There's a reason why people prefer consoles." Though, I just remembered that not too long ago, our Xbox 360 had the infamous Red Ring of Death. Not only that, but that Red Ring of Death just so happens to be associated with technology. Oh, wait. Robots are also associated with technology. Do you see where I'm going with this? Ah, yes! Robots taking over the world. That's right - Afterall, computers aren't all around faulty and--... Wait, what's that? Pull the plug and... Whammo! Bam! Zip! That's it. End of the story.

Though, I hate computers. And consoles (or, at least, Xbox 360s). And switching it to the news.

On your subject, since I've trailed far off, I must say that I've only a few remote solutions.
1) Push a bunch of key combinations when the light comes on.
2) Hold the power button and cross your fingers.
3) Swear a lot and buy a little bit of dynamite for the inevitable deconstruction of the computer.
4) Put your computer in your father's computer's place and chant, "Tadaa!"
5) Refund? (Unless it came from the black market. Don't ask for refunds, there.)
6) Warranty? (Unless it came from aliens from Outer Space, Rated PG-13.)
7) Plug the computer in someplace else.
8) If you built it from scratch, then don't apply to number nine.
9) Call the computer's manufacturer (or company? Whichever one it is.) and troubleshoot.
10) Call me! I can find you just the right sledgehammer. For free, too!
11) Attempt cutting it in half perfectly with a wakizashi.
12) Troubleshot.

If none of the above apply, then... I'm not sure what to say!
I hate computers. It's a nightmare trying to figure out what's the source of the problem, especially in an age like this. Hell, even rocket science is easier. Afterall, rocket science is nothing but putting rocket fuel in a water bottle and starting a fire axe on fire (irony!) and trying to play baseball with it. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know how to do that!" Yes, but it does take a brainless pyromaniac to figure out how to re-assemble alien technology during an assault from Russia's amazing nuclear flatulence.

KoRnScythe wrote:

You see, I was just going to say, "There's a reason why people prefer consoles." Though, I just remembered that not too long ago, our Xbox 360 had the infamous Red Ring of Death. Not only that, but that Red Ring of Death just so happens to be associated with technology. Oh, wait. Robots are also associated with technology. Do you see where I'm going with this? Ah, yes! Robots taking over the world. That's right - Afterall, computers aren't all around faulty and--... Wait, what's that? Pull the plug and... Whammo! Bam! Zip! That's it. End of the story.

Maybe you should stick with something simpler then, TV's and DVD players these days are pretty simple to operate. :mrgreen:

I have a problem with this post. People expect way too much these days from technology. To think that such intricate technology will work 'out of the box' is a pipe dream, perpetuated by the marketing machines of Dell, HP, IBM and other such companies. Technology such as computers are not simple, nor are operating systems. People should stop believing the marketing hypes (and science fiction movies where one replaces a 'crystal' and it works) and should look at where we really are in terms of technology: The stone age.

For computers, that's where we are, the stone-age.

Just 20 years ago, nobody worked with computers, now everybody has one. We will have a long, long, loooooong way to go before we get technology that always works, is stable, and is always simple to troubleshoot.

It's just like cars; a computer is an intricate and difficult machine to troubleshoot and people should leave it to professionals instead of tinkering themselves. But when a computer is broken they go 'it's so hard it's such a bad technology; it's HP's fault, it's MS's fault blah blah'...
But when a car breaks down, everybody knows you should take it to the garage. A mentality change should happen on all fronts, the press, the distributors but mostly with consumers.

I used to build my own PC's, now I've given up on that, simply because there are too many dependencies to take note of when building a machine (especially when building a gaming machine).

I've (still) got a sort of same problem unsolved, but i discovered an alternative...
I turn my pc on, but nothing happen except the MB and alim turn on. (and so lights are on, but no HD, screen or PCIE)
Then, after around 10 minutes, i reset... and then the PC start like nothing happened...

Maybe the psu blew the ram. PSU spikes are the most common reason for broken ram. Broken ram can allow the fans and lights to run, but nothing else (even no error beeps). So run your good psu with the mobo and GPU and CPU, but no ram. If you get beeps, you can deduce the ram is borked.

request an RMA from manufacturer

bad cpu's cause no video, so it's not a cpu problem, most likely it's a motherboard failure. lights can turn on, but that means nothing, there is way more that can go wrong than lights going out. the power supply is still a probable cause, but you may never know unless you go buy one of those power supply testers, I think they run $20. you just plug them into a device that confirms that it's being supplied the proper separate voltages and tells you if it's good or bad. But if not, I would safely replace(rma) the motherboard if you have a warranty with it. and if that doesn't do it, rma the power supply.

I bought this system online via CompUSA (who was recently bought out by TigerDirect) and I've been told over the phone that I can take everything to CompUSA and do an exchange on the spot. So I'll be boxing everything back up and attempting to exchange it tomorrow. We'll see how that goes.

I could try just exchanging the motherboard and PSU but at this point it's probably safe to say that one failed and damaged the other in the process. And given the implied domino effect, other components may have been compromised as well so I might as well replace everything to be safe.

Jack Rammsdell wrote:

... go buy one of those power supply testers ...

The irony here is that I was pondering buying one of those testers the day before the computer died. I was out in search of an internal SD card reader when I saw one and thought ...

"Oh. Well look at that. That's a lot easier than screwing around with a multimeter. But I'll never use it."

I usually just use a spare power supply for testing purposes, if you have one.

Sure if you mean spare as in "taken out of my own personal computer". Of course, I have other "spares" but they're too old to be of much use since newer systems use 24 pin connectors.

The problem is solved for now though. I've exchanged everything and rebuilt it. We'll see how things are in a week.