Helping out a co-worker's son

[ultraman7k]

So I agreed to help out a co-worker's son to try and fix his computer problems, which he got for a $25 tim card lol.

The set up:

some kind of AM2+ socket processor by the looks of it
512 or 1 GB of DDR2-800 ram. None of the sticks indicated. He had 2 sticks.
EVGA GT 250 512mb GPU
600w Coolermaster PSU
WD HDD, didn't look at size.

Problem:

No monitor output.

Initial guess was faulty GPU or PSU, but everything powered up correctly. Though he did indicate to me that the blue indicator on the front power button used to light up, which it doesn't any more.

Tried pulling out the GPU and using the MOBO VGA out, still no monitor output on either. Tried a different monitor in case it might have been his display, but it wasn't.

Plugged in speakers, hoping to hear Window's chime but nothing.
Pulled out MOBO battery.
Tried booting with 1 stick of ram, in slots, alternated sticks and slots.
Tried an alternate SATA connector.

My conclusion in this is that it is the mobo that's fried? I'm not getting any POST beeps either, and I can hear the hard drive spooling...

Any ideas?

[sswilson]

You tried a different monitor, but did you try a different cable? Did you do a cmos reset as well as pulling the battery?

Best place to start is to get the model number of the motherboard so that you can grab a manual off of the `net for things like the speaker pin outs.

[ultraman7k]

Originally Posted by sswilson

You tried a different monitor, but did you try a different cable? Did you do a cmos reset as well as pulling the battery?

Best place to start is to get the model number of the motherboard so that you can grab a manual off of the `net for things like the speaker pin outs.

Yep. Did the CMOS/battery, tried a different monitor cable, no avail. Found the manual, the motherboard is an ECS GeForce 6100SM-M2 (AM2, not AM2+ as I originally thought).

Don't have a speaker on me for the pins at the moment, but I don't think it's getting past that point anyways. Kind of hard to tell without it outputting anything to display.

[Perineum]

I bet one of the rails on the PSU has failed.

[Funguseater]

Hi Ultraman7k

Just a couple of ideas..

1 Do you have a multi-meter to test the output of the power supply? or Do you have another PSU to try, I have found that most PC hardware problems relate to poor quality/old PSU's If its an AM2 board that PSU could have been around for quite some time. Just because the fans are spinning doesn't mean its getting enough juice to propperly run.

2 I would remove the CPU check for bent pins/reapply TIM and re-seat the CPU/Heatsink.

3 Set up the system on a table, not in the case (easier to test this way). If the system starts then you know it is just a matter of carefully rebuilding the PC and maybe looking for a shorted wire?

Just some things I would try... good luck.
Fungi

[enaberif]

Does the motherboard HAVE a speaker? Cause most times you need to hook one up yourself to hear ANY bios beeps

[Funguseater]

Hi, so I noticed new egg came up when I googled this board, you should take a look. Seems like a lot of people were having issues, memory slots failing and wierd cpu problems

Fungi

[Perineum]

Seems par for the course for a Gigabyte board....

[Dzzope]

Originally Posted by Perineum

Seems par for the course for a Gigabyte board....

Except that it's an ECS...

get a speaker for the post beeps... if still no beeps then cpu / board would be the main guess..

[trayton]

For sure need to hear the post beeps, I also have a machine like this (older one) that I need to work on sooner or later lol and have the same issue won't show any screen but seems to power up fine. I just need to throw a little 4 pin speaker on there so I can hear and hopefully go from there :)