Journal #8522

Posted 9 years ago2015-03-15 20:21:51 UTC
In need of some hardware expertise here. I have my old computer, which is where all my old files live. I had been using it as a file dump/backup right up until it ran out of hard disk space.

Since I got this fancy new network-enabled drive (it's little more than a compact file server really, it's literally a Linux system with a file share and a web server for setting it up) I've been throwing everything there instead. So the time came to take all the old work files and send them there too.

Because I used this computer less and less often, at some point it decided to no longer start up immediately. As of today, the last time I turned it on was on friday. And before that, sometime in January. When I turn it on, nothing happens. Lights and fans go on, but nothing happens. No post, no output at all from the video card. The monitor sits there blinking its LED waiting for a video signal.

Normally, after turning it off and back on a few times, it finally starts up. On friday, I had left it on this idle state for several hours wondering if it needed to charge the battery to be able to start up, and it did work. However I tried the same yesterday without success. Leaving it on all day didn't make a difference.

Has anybody here had this experience before?

6 Comments

Commented 9 years ago2015-03-15 20:47:13 UTC Comment #62668
Motherboard power distribution issue most likely.
Look for fat caps, a voltage converter could be blown. My usual suspicion when there is power but no post.
Commented 9 years ago2015-03-15 23:05:00 UTC Comment #62667
can you just pull the hard drive and slave it to a newer machine to pull your data off?
Commented 9 years ago2015-03-16 02:31:31 UTC Comment #62669
My only other computer is a laptop :(
Commented 9 years ago2015-03-16 09:55:08 UTC Comment #62666
The easiest solution here is to buy a cheap SATA enclosure for the hard-drive in that computer and just pull the files off it through your laptop.

I'd maybe try reseating some stuff as well, like the RAM and the CMOS battery.
Commented 9 years ago2015-03-16 15:15:37 UTC Comment #62671
It could be the motherboard RAM slots or the RAM sticks itself too. Try to swap the RAM sticks or remove any additional one and leave it just one alone (trying to swap that one to different slots).
If this doesn't help, then I think it's the motherboard (like rufee says).

Your computer is pretty old, SugarMan; I won't be surprised if that'd happen to me.
Commented 9 years ago2015-03-16 19:36:00 UTC Comment #62670
I did try reseating the RAM and it made no difference. I'll try the battery, but I'm not too optimistic.

I don't see why the motherboard would be fried for no reason, especially considering it turned on just fine three days ago.

[update]Fuck it. My dad let me borrow his desktop so I brought it in and I'm going to do it the hard way. Gonna get done with it as fast as I can, because Windows Vista.

[update2]I'll need one of those SATA to USB things. Vista thinks the hard drive is invalid.

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