PC won't post

Caine · Post by **Caine** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 6:51 pm

i've got a workstation here which i haven't been able to get working.

its a p3 1ghz with 512mb. it has 2 maxtor 30gb's in a mirrored raid configuration (pretty sure its mirrored, not striped.) connected to a promise ide card and the boot drive is a 40gb maxtor.

after a reformat/reinstall for hand-me-down, i decided to take out the extra drives as the new customer had no need for it and the drives could be better used elsewhere. i disco'ed the drives and pulled the card. the system wouldn't post, so i plugged everything back in and restarted. now it doesn't post like that either.

pulled all 3 of the drives and dropped another one in. no change.

any suggestions?

Pyperkub · Post by **Pyperkub** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 6:41 pm

Any beep codes?

Is it getting power? PS fan kick in, and all that? will it post with simply a boot floppy?

Rip · Post by **Rip** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 7:16 pm

Should post with no HDDs, the only things needed for post are Power, CPU, VID and of course the motherboard. remove everything else. Hopefully you should at least get some beeps.

Enough · Post by **Enough** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 8:09 pm

Dude, the computer can't actually make your forum posts for you. Geez some peeps are so lazy these days... do you want your PC to write your papers for you too?

Biyobi · Post by **Biyobi** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 8:17 pm

Next time power that machine down before you go ripping things out!

Seriously though, it sounds like you may have static-fried something when you pulled the drives originally. Good luck.

Pyperkub · Post by **Pyperkub** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 8:26 pm

Enough wrote:Dude, the computer can't actually make your forum posts for you. Geez some peeps are so lazy these days... do you want your PC to write your papers for you too?

LOL why not - they're all over the internet

Caine · Post by **Caine** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 10:00 pm

no sounds at all except for physical items. tried with no hd and same result. no post with floppy either.

what is confusing me most is the "it worked the last time" syndrome. i hate when something stops working for random reasons and leaves no clue to why it stopped.

Bakhtosh · Post by **Bakhtosh** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 3:07 pm

It's an older PC. Try changing the CMOS Battery.

Remove the memory and see if you get a beep code saying that there's no memory.

Pyperkub · Post by **Pyperkub** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 2:55 am

Caine wrote:no sounds at all except for physical items. tried with no hd and same result. no post with floppy either.

what is confusing me most is the "it worked the last time" syndrome. i hate when something stops working for random reasons and leaves no clue to why it stopped.

By "Physical items" what do you mean?

First off - are you getting Power?

If so, where?

Do the fan(s) get power? If you have a NIC in there, do its lights light up? Does the fan on the Processor and graphics card start spinning? do they (the fans) start and then stop (indicative of a short somewhere)?

Is the video card seated? Anything else loose, or plugged in funky (eg: the power switch connector?).

If all those work, it could be the CMOS battery (though there's usually an error).