My Computers Died..HELP

[theneoking]

My main computer is completly had it...Well so I think:x

I woke up the other morning to turn ON my PC it fires it self up but then it suddenly dies out, tried powering it back up several times still no luck, i even hot wired the power switch and swapped the PSU over and still no luck, whats happend to it:?:

Other clues to the problem might help, its been making beeping noises for about 4 months before this every time I powered it up, I didnt have the slightest clue to why this was happening and just chose to ignore it, so now the end resultant is it wont even give me any signs of life can anyone help me out!

[DAve]

what kind of beepy noises?
They're usually meaning the Bios has found something wrong and needs to be looked at further. Look up your motherboard manual for details of the beeps.

It might be a hard drive fried, it might be clogged with dust and overheating, it might have shorted out something.

[CaNNoN_FoDDa]

It could also be your cpu cooler.

[gmmonkey]

If you can remember what the beeps sounded like and what bios you have you can pinpoint which bit of hardware that is screwed up. *CLICKY*Post beep codes. (http://www.helpwithpcs.com/upgrading/post-beep-codes.htm) Did you get crashes, blue screen of death after you had been playing your comp for a while? If so, did you catch what the screen said. Did it happen more when you played games? How old is your computer? Does it some times boot up after several goes (about ten times)?

You say it's your main computer, have you tried swapping the gfx card, ram and hard drive into another comp? If you dont have another comp, try taking out components bits at a time and start the computer up. If you take a component out and you get the bios screen, then that parts most likely the faulty part. Leave the motherboard and the cpu alone. Start with the ram. My hunch is the ram is faulty.

[DAve]

that's some good advice there, gmmonkey
great post :D

[LastChanceHotel]

I presume by "beepy noises" you mean a single beep on startup; this is normal.

long beeps indicate a problem with memory, short beeps indicate a problem with your graphics card. Anything else requires delving into the manual of your motherboard to locate.

In reference to your problem, by "no signs of life" I presume you mean "no lights, no fans, no nothing" :P - this is usually indicative of either a) the motherboard being dead or otherwise unable to perform its required function, or b) your power supply is misbehaving. As you've swapped out the PSU, I'd recommend finding someone with similar hardware to you, and go pay them a visit, swapping out each component in turn to their machine to work out what's wrong.

Motherboards pop all the time, I've lost two in the last 4 months. Nothing unusual. Similarly, PSUs are also as sensitive; I have lost three in the last 9 months (my Opteron system eats watts, and also unfortunately power supplies :()

[YegaDoyai]

For the love of god, think before posting people.

Motherboards do not just pop. I have got a mobo from almost 10 years ago still working and it has been abused to hell and back and still working like the little packhorse that it is. They shoud give a minimum of 3 years hassle free service, I'm not happy unless I get 5 and I've never had less than that. (except the one I blew up, but that was my fault :)

PSU failures are well known but generaly most people learned in the original Athlon era that they needed to upgrade thier PSU with the rest of the components, those that still fail to listen to reason suffer as a consequence.

The beeps are manufacturer specific so I have no idea what to tell you unless you know your bios and specific beep code.

In general if it beeps but works it means memory is faulty or bios is faulty. Exceptions are stupid settings in bios like "tell me if my CPU fan is too slow" when you are not using the CPU fan header. But none of them should ever be ignored. If your bios aint happy then you can be sure that something BIG is wrong somewhere.

Getting back to your dignosis. The suggestions that have preceeded this are correct, you just need to do component based testing to find the offending item and fix/replace it.

Frequently systems that are not touched or infrequently looked after clog up with dirt and such, I'd suggest that taking it apart and cleaning it, then putting it back together making sure all cables are in properly could well either highlight the problem (you might see physical damage) or fix the problem (overheating/loose cable).

Enough speculation, give us more details!

[Bluepixie]

fantastic post yega, spot on. :) neo, if you can give us your hardware specs as well, that would extremely useful.