PC not booting. Only HD LED turned on for 5 seconds.

[Charlie82]

Yesterday when working on the PC, it blocked windows xp(totally frozen: num lock didn´t work).

I restarted and the screen didn´t showed anything, only the hard disk LED turned on for 5 seconds but I didn´t hear any HD reading sound. And no beeps at all.

I tried changing the memory, PSU and graphic card.

Any idea of what happened?


Regards

 

[Dan17]

I'd say replace your hard drive just to see, if you have a spare hard drive.
Though if it doesnt even post...the hard drive wouldn't matter.

Well since you've eliminated pretty much a lot of the stuff you'd mainly need to be looking at your motherboard and processor. I'd say clear the CMOS...if that doesnt work. I'd assume you'd need to look at replacing one of those.


...Dan

 

[Charlie82]

How to clear the CMOS, removing the battery for few hours and putting it back?

The motherboard LED turns on but I guess it does not imply that the MB is ok.


Just as note: I know the PSU was bad and caused some bad things on other computers but I tested that PSU on another computer and it worked. The PSU can damage the CPU or only the motherboard?


Regards

 

[Dan17]

Actually yes that is one of the ways, another way is to use the clear CMOS jumper

There are two ways to erase these dynamic settings, by either resetting a jumper on the motherboard itself (referred to as a "clear CMOS" jumper), or by physically remove the power from the computer (disconnecting the power plug) and then removing a battery (used to maintain power to the PROM chip that contains the Bios/CMOS information) from the motherboard.

Some motherboards have lights that will give you information if they are functioning correctly or not but they are not all like that so take a look on your board for any extra lights that are off or on and refer to your manual.

Well the PSU supplies power to the motherboard as well as floppy, cd-rom, and hard drives but the motherboard redirects that power to all devices attatched to the board. So really any part of the computer can be damaged by a power supply. That is why it's so important to get a good power supply when you build your computer because it should be dependable so as not to bring down your whole system. If that power supply is bad, shell out the money for one that is from a quality company (antec, enermax, thermaltake, seasonic, etc.) Check out this thread from PSU forum

But I mean your case is a very difficult one because its not really that easy to test the motherboard or cpu unless you had a spare of each to swap out and test.

...Dan