Oatmeal
06-15-04, 02:25 PM
I know this could be caused by quite a few things, but i'll try to make it as detailed as possible.<BR><BR>This all started on day when my friend was on the computer. He was looking at the 'display properties' and he noticed that some of the text there looked like it was spelled in german or itialian or something strange. So I told him to restart the computer and when he did the computer just wouldn't start at all. It didn't even load the bios. So I got on my pc (this one) and asked a few ppl I know what they thought it could be. One told it the mother board probably went while another told me it was probably the cpu. Since it was an old computer and I found the parts for cheap I replaced both of them but now the computer still fails to load. Since they were replaced new or used (but working) it couldn't be them. <BR><BR>Hopefully some of this information will help:<BR>-The power supply was tested with a volt meter and has the correct voltage output.<BR>-The computer has 3 RAM chips so i tried them separately (and even took the ram out of this pc to try) and none helped it any.<BR>-The pc has 2 HDDs and i've tried it with both (set to master & one was tested in this pc and works)<BR>-I've tried 3 different video cards (1 of which is in this pc right now) and none worked. <BR>-I've tried another monitor just in case (the monitor light flashes when it isn't getting a signal and is solid when it's getting a signal and <BR> it never did anything other the flash).<BR>-I've tried it with everything removed/unplugged except the cpu, ram, and video card (which was done with each 3)<BR>-In each case the fans come on but the bios doesn't post.<BR><BR>The only strange behaviour I can tell (strange in the fact I have no clue why it does this) is that when the HDD is connected to the power but the IDE cable isn't connect to the motherboard the hard drive will access and I can hear it spinning and reading. But when the computer is started with the IDE cable connected to the motherboard the hard drive doesn't do anything, no spinning or reading.<BR><BR>That's all i've been able to get from everything i've done and it still doesn't work. If anyone has any ideas what could be causing it or something else i can try i'm open to ideas. AS a last resort i'm taking it to a pc shop next week, just don't wanna spend that much money because it's a really old pc. <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-sad.gif" border="0"><BR><BR>Relevent Specs: <BR> Motherboard - LegenX 5 (P6i440LX)<BR> CPU - Pentium 2 300Mhz<BR> Video Card - ATI Rage Pro/ATI Rage Fury MAXX/Geforce 2 MX<BR><BR>Thanks for reading.