[soylattemom]

My husband was opening an attachment (which he had opened before on his work computer, and his laptop) and the screen just went black and the tower started beeping. When rebooting you can hear the computer shutting down and restarting, but nothing shows on the screen--just black, not even the mouse pointer or hourglass. After a few reboots the beeping stopped.

He hooked up a different monitor to the computer, but it was black too. Then he hooked up another computer to our monitor and it works fine...which is how I'm able to visit this site.

Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Wendy

 

[valis]

dead monitor. If you can hook the monitor to a known good machine, and get nothing, that points to the monitor. If you can hook a known good monitor to the machine in question, and get a response, dead monitor certainly. You can double check the cable and make sure none of the pins are bent, but chances are it's toast.

Good news is you can buy new monitors fairly cheap, and if you don't go the flat panel way (as I didn't) you can get a CRT for REAL cheap.

 

[soylattemom]

But I'm looking at the monitor right now...it's working--hooked up to a computer my husband brought from work. It only doesn't work when hooked to our computer

 

[valis]

then I misread; my apologies.

So the monitor works. And it looks like you tried a different monitor as well, same result.

When you turn it on, do you hear a solitary beep, followed by the normal sounds of the hd spinning up? Or something else entirely? If the former, that's good, because that means that the machine cleared post, and most likely your vid card is dead. If, when you turn it on, you don't hear any beeps, or you hear a sequence of beeps (long - short - long; and if you hear those, write the sequence down) then it's something more serious.

I'm off to class in a few, so I may not be the one answering you later tonight. I will see tomorrow, though.

v

 

[soylattemom]

we don't hear any beeps now. It started beeping when it first blacked out and the beeping was methodical--the timing was kind of like a VCR clock flashing or a digital clock after the power goes out. Maybe a beep a second.

Then, the first few times we rebooted it kept beeping, but eventually it stopped, and now it doesn't beep at all. You can just hear it shutting down and coming back on.

Hope this helps. I'm going to bed now, but my husband is off tomorrow and will check for replies. Thanks a lot!

 

[bigdog99]

Could be your memory or video adapter has gone south.

 

[valis]

okay, so if you power your pc on, you get no beeps now, and it shuts down pretty quickly. If I were you I'd stop playing with it, and take it to your local computer store (NOT best buy or circuit city, but rather a mom and pop shop who actually care about their clientele), as you could have a slew of problems, some of which could be very damaging to your machine if you continue to try to start it. The first thing I would check is the motherboard temps, and specifically if the fan on the processor is firing up, as it sounds like it's overheating, which is the more serious of the diagnosis. One other leading contender is a fried power supply unit (psu) which would be better, price-wise.

The fact that it doesn't stay on leads me away from the video card, and points me to overheating (machines are told to turn off before melting themselves) or the power supply. You may want to try a different power cable AND a different outlet to see what happens, but only try that once.

But unless you are comfortable testing this stuff, don't try it at home. Let someone who knows what is up take a gander.

v

 

[soylattemom]

ok. Thanks a lot for your help. Overheating would definitely make sense, because we had noticed that it seemed like the computer was running constantly lately--kind of loudly. We have a place that we can take it to. We always like to try this site first--you guys are great!

Thanks again,
Wendy

 

[valis]

If it was running loud, could be that the fan was malfunctioning; had that happend to my 98 box. Glad you have a smaller company you can take it to. If, however, they say that you need the new 'hexagonal cooling fans', just pass, please. No need, unless you are running something like rambus and a few gigs of it.