Major PC Crash SORTED

[Scoosh]

Came home from CC Ecosse Forum ride Sunday pm and Mrs Scoosh told me the PC had gone funny . She had plugged in her flash drive stick for the first time in 5 weeks, it wouldn't open, then the screen 'went funny', then froze. Restarting didn't help, so she switched off and waited till I returned.


Restarting produced a series of blue screens with assorted error messages and I thought I was getting to a Safe Start, when it all died on me. Currently, it will not even start; green light comes on on front panel, red light blinks a couple of times but nada on the screen or anywhere else. Screen shows BenQ screen when it is switched on but no PC stuff.

I have gone through the pcsupport topic here, down as far as testing the power supply. All tests OK but still no start up.

PC is DinoPC, about 1 year old, Win 7, AVG free, ZoneAlarm free. Mrs Scoosh's flash stick worked fine back at school yesterday.


Anyone any ideas (preferably not expensive ones ) ?


Many Thanks in expectation.

 

[Hockeynut]

Basically disconnect everything non essiential from the motherboard, to rule out any components causing these. If you have enough memory sticks, then try alternating those to see if one of those may be causing it. That'll probably do for starters.

Also, have you tried CMOS reset?

 

[Scoosh]

Basically disconnect everything non essiential from the motherboard, to rule out any components causing these. If you have enough memory sticks, then try alternating those to see if one of those may be causing it. That'll probably do for starters.

Also, have you tried CMOS reset?

I've got everything disconnected bar the monitor at the mo' and still no joy.

I've popped up the wee battery to disconnect it, then reset it - to no avail .

Is that what you were meaning to 'CMOS reset' ?

'Preciate your help, Hockeynut.

 

[2Loose]

CMOS reset often needs the battery take out and then a jumper moved\shorted and then replaced, depending on the motherboard.
Just checking, but have you taken out the memory, disconnected the hard drive and then restarted to see if there is any change in symptoms?

When it shows the BenQ screen (they make monitors, surely not computers too?) does hitting Escape get you anywhere.

 

[NormanD]

First make sure theres no power what so ever going into the PC ... with the power off hold in the start button for 10 seconds (this will kill any residule power left in the CPU) ... open the side and find the CMOS jumper switch (Normally two pins with cmos written next to it on the mobo) you need to jump these by connecting them together with a flat bladed screwdriver or use a jumper pin if one is handy for about 5 seconds.

Now connect the power and switch on the PC (make sure the hard drive is connected, you can leave all the others un-connected) while it boots into the first phase hold the F8 button (this will boot you into safe mode) you can either reset by choosing the "last known good configuration" or continue in safe mode.

You can do a system check once the PC boots in

If the PC dosen't reach this stage, then I'd be looking at maybe the Hard drive is at fault.

I hope it helps

Norm

 

[ian turner]

Unplug everything means everything inside the case except the memory graphics card and processor/fan.
So unplug any drives and any expansion cards aside from the graphics card.
If it doesn't start up then remove the memory and graphics card altogether and see if it gives a bleep error on start up.
If not then examine the capacitors on the board and make sure none are bulging or leaking from the top (don't rate this
personally as 90% of failures are PSU and this dates back to a large batch of duff capacitors a while back).

 

[woohoo]

I've had a similar thing happen on two PCs and in both cases it was the video card that was at fault (confirmed in each case by removing the video card and connecting the monitor to the on-board video output). With the first PC, the video card had to be replace but with the other, removing the card (after everything was powered-off / disconnected) and the re-inserting it cured the problem.

 

[HJ]

Have you checked the warranty, you say about one year old, is it still inwith the warranty period?

 

[Scoosh]

WOW ! I never cease to be amazed at the goodness of the CC family to help .
Many Thanks to all who have chipped in to offer pearls of wisdom .


The situation at present is:
- removing the video card and reconnecting the monitor directly to the mum-board , having removed the battery, re-set the CMOS by doing the jumper thing, now produces stuff on the monitor ......

..... however, it now goes as far as saying (in B & W):
"BIOS ROM checksum error

Detecting floppy drive A media . . .
Drive A error. System halt"

I was using a Logitech wireless keyboard/mouse but that does not seem to be getting anything from the USB port, so have plugged in an older wired keyboard.
Holding down F8 makes no difference. There is no floppy drive.

Good progress thus far - any suggestions where to go from here ?


I'll have a dig around for the docs to check warranty.

 

[Tigerbiten]

You may need to use the "Del" key to get into the bios, not the "F8" key.

That the only thing I can think of to help.

Luck ..........

 

[2Loose]

Well the fact you have a better result, even if it is a 'BIOS Rom Checksum Error' is a good sign.
What you need to do is somehow get into the BIOS screens, which tell the PC what date\time it is as well as what hard drives, floppies etc are connected to it (amongst other things).

Many machines allow you access these by pressing one of these (depending on the motherboard) Delete \ F1 \ F2 \ Esc when the computer first shows a sign of life. The button normally required is often shown when first starting up, like this one which you may notice at the bottom says 'Press DEL to enter SETUP'.

Once you get inside, there is normally an option 'Reset to Defaults'...which should fix the corruption and move you onto the next step.

 

[HLaB]

Sounds like you're getting somewhere Scoosh, I wouldn't really know about bios stuff myself; I think I've had to do it in the past but couldn't tell you how. My first step in pc problems has been to do a system restore (restores settings to an early date when thing were working) and this gets rid of conflicts but you have to be at least in Safe Mode for that to work, 'System Restore' is in 'Accessories'/ 'System Tool'.

Microsoft can be stupid sometimes. When I set my old pc in Dublin everything was working grand but I decided to remove the usb keyboard and put it in the other usb slot as this would give me more room. Doing so put the machine into a constant power on/ power off circuit on start up (not even getting as far as safe mode). I took the keyboard out, put it back in its original usb port rebooted and got as far as 'safe mode' done a 'system restore' and everything was fine again Subsequently I never had that problem again

 

[Scoosh]

Still not getting beyond the BIOS ROM checksum error, despite trying Esc, F1-F12 and all other non- alphabetical/numeral keys .

Keyboard is OK, as wee lights flash as it connects

 

[HLaB]

If you have a restore disc you could try restoring from that. Or as a last resort get hold of a factory restore disc (but this resets everything and all your files would be lost).

 

[Scoosh]

If you have a restore disc you could try restoring from that. Or as a last resort get hold of a factory restore disc (but this resets everything and all your files would be lost).

Discs .

Yes, I have a couple of them. Not a Restore but I do have a Foxconn (for the motherboard) and a Win 7 - but I suspect that the Foxconn is just the manual on cd. I've got the manual too . Would there be anything I could usefully extract from there ? (other then it saying "Press [DEL] to enter Setup, [Esc] to boot menu")

Not surprisingly, I would prefer not to lose all my files