My Computer died. need help diagnosing the problem

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CrysisMcGee

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Sep 2, 2009
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Was playing a game when my screen went black. Shut it down, turned it back on. No beeps, just a blue screen. monitor says no input. Tried to shut it down again and the power button wouldnt work no matter how long i held it down. Had to use the switch on the power supply. Front power button works to turn on, but not shut down.

Tried resetting the bios, tried it with no sticks of Ram. Nothing.

A few weeks ago I reapplied Thermal Paste to the cpu because it was overheating and shutting down my pc. Everything was working fine until a few hours ago.

Also tried unplugging power to the video card, just got a long continuous beep. unplugged power and cables to the hard drives, nothing.

Any Ideas?
 

Aramis Night

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Mar 31, 2013
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In the off chance that it may be 2 separate issues that happened at the same time(doubtful), try hooking your monitor up to the onboard graphics connection instead of the video card (assuming you are using one since you were gaming on it). See if you get any signal to your monitor that way. Perhaps GPU died. If you can, try it with a different cord as well to eliminate that possibility.
 

CrysisMcGee

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Aramis Night said:
In the off chance that it may be 2 separate issues that happened at the same time(doubtful), try hooking your monitor up to the onboard graphics connection instead of the video card (assuming you are using one since you were gaming on it). See if you get any signal to your monitor that way. Perhaps GPU died. If you can, try it with a different cord as well to eliminate that possibility.
Tried it. no change. Could be my power supply, Motherboard, or CPU. It won't even post.
 

Aramis Night

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Yeah, it does come down to likely being at least 1 of those 3 components, though PSU seems unlikely as you are getting power. I would say its most likely motherboard if I had to guess. Sadly, it may mean its time for a new machine if that's the case, depending on how much you can salvage from this one that would work on a new mother board.
 

CrysisMcGee

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Aramis Night said:
Yeah, it does come down to likely being at least 1 of those 3 components, though PSU seems unlikely as you are getting power. I would say its most likely motherboard if I had to guess. Sadly, it may mean its time for a new machine if that's the case, depending on how much you can salvage from this one that would work on a new mother board.
Well one website i read said that the PSU can still work even if its broken, just supplying insufficent power or no power to certain areas. but thats my last option, gonna try it when i can get a new one. Otherwise yeah, time for a new one. at least my hard drives are intact.

Thankyou for your help
 

CrysisMcGee

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albino boo said:
Try pulling the hard drive leads out.
\I did. I tried it with no hard drives. tried it with no ram. tried it with no hard drives, no ram, and no video card. plugged it in to the onboard video from the motherboard. still wont POST or boot to BIOS.

Only thing is when i mount the video card but dont plug in the power to the card, i get a continuous beep when i turn it on. still have to use the power switch on the PSU to shut it off
 

SnowyGamester

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Oct 18, 2009
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Almost definitely a problem with the motherboard or PSU. CPUs can fail but it's an infrequent occurrence under normal circumstances. Unfortunately you can run into similar symptoms regardless of the failure point so it's difficult to be certain without some testing. If you've got another computer you could borrow the PSU from to test with I suggest you start there. If not you don't have much choice other than to take it to a professional or risk buying replacement components that don't require replacing.
 

antidonkey

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Dec 10, 2009
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Inspect all the capacitors on the motherboard. Check to see if any are bulging or leaking. Leaking ones are easy to spot but it might be hard to tell if any are bulging so you might want to run your fingers of the top of them. If any are bulging or leaking then it's time for a new motherboard.