my comp died and won't respawn Created 14 years ago2009-05-25 02:29:01 UTC by Mariowned

I was playing a rousing game of left 4 dead with my friend and my computer randomly shut off. The tank hit me pretty hard with that concrete slab, but I don't think he knocked anything loose. At first I thought a fuse in my house blew, but then I realized my monitor was still on. Now my computer won't turn back on at all.

When I plug my ethernet I can see the little green light next to it turn on, so I don't think it's a problem with the power supply. I tried a different outlet that is on a different circuit in my house, so I don't think there's a problem with the cable wire or any outlets.

I recently upgraded my comp's ram and gcard, so I put the old hardware back in but still no luck.

I reset the motherboard's cmos but still nothing.

I really don't have any knowledge with computers, so I ran out of ways to troubleshoot. Anyone have any ideas or suggestions on what might be the problem?

Does the CPU or PSU fan spin up when you turn the computer on?

The computer won't turn on at all.

Sounds like a PSU / mother board issue.

Time to call Mr.Bucklehead

If the computer won't turn on at all, it's either:
a) broken PSU
b) broken power cable
c) your PSU is turned off
d) broken connection between your case and your motherboard (so the 'on' button does nothing)

If the motherboard was broken, the PSU fan would still spin up, and the CPU would probably be spinning too. If you're not spinning, you're not getting power.

If you have another computer in the house most of these are easy to test.

Check out the RAM sticks. I had this problem with a computer years ago and I just bought a new one. Five years later, I cleaned it up and it turned out to be a very, very, very dirty RAM stick.

It's probably your power supply if the computer is completely non-responsive.

Disconnect the power supply from everything, and looking at the main motherboard power connector, cross the green wire with any black (ground) wire using a paperclip. Plug the power supply in, and turn it on. This turns the power supply on without needing it to be hooked into the motherboard, and will tell you if your power supply is good or not. This trick works on all power supplies, and I personally use it all the time.

If your power supply turns out bad, you may be in for worse than just a cheap replacement. You could have just as easily fried the motherboard and anything connected to it. That's what happened to my last computer, forcing me to upgrade. But I literally had smoke coming up from my case.

The ram sticks are brand new and if they were the problem I am pretty sure the computer would turn on and I just wouldn't receive a video response on the monitor.

When I have it plugged in and I put the ethernet cable in a little green light turns on next to it. Maybe the power supply is just about dead but has enough juice to light this green light? This green light is the only thing that responds at all.

I checked all of the wires and none of them look fried. Why would the computer completely shut down if the case button connector was the problem?

I don't have another comp to troubleshoot other parts, so hopefully I can get a friend to help.

srry I am not exactly sure what cable you are talking about to perform that test. The only green wire I see is inside of the power supply which is attached to the 3 pronged outlet plug thingy.

Thanks for all of the replies though. I honestly appreciate them.

There's a primary cable that plugs directly into the motherboard. It's the biggest one with 20 or 24 pins, you can't exactly miss it. There's a bunch of wires feeding into it, and one of them is green. Bend a paperclip, stick one end in the green wire's terminal, the other in any black wire's terminal, like this:



Very easy.

It should run continuously, if not you've either set it up wrong or your PSU's dead.

damn your picture isn't working. ok the 20 pin plug has a greenish wire with 1 black wire on the right and 3 black wires to the left. there is also a black wire on the little 4 pin plug that sticks out of the 20 pin plug

This isnt very helpful but i cant help cracking up...

the name of this thread...

My computer died and wont respawn

Maybe its out of lives?? Lol...sorry...not very helpful...

(hardware is not my thing...im in on the software)

Yeah Mariowned, you don't need to use the 4 pin plug, just cross the green wire with any of the black ones. There is a black one next to the green wire, which will work fine. But there's only one green wire, so you can't really mess that up.

Ok I tried the green wire with all of the different black ones and the psu wouldn't run. The only paperclips I had are painted like candy canes but I scraped the paint off with a pocketknife. I will honestly be relieved if the power supply just randomly died and buying a new one will fix everything. I am going to try and access a working one before I order a new one.

Thanks for the interesting tip srry. If anyone else has different ways to troubleshoot I am all ears.

Well as long as you're sure the paperclip made contact, your power supply is definitely dead. When mine died, it wouldn't do anything either.

I hope your computer's fine too, but either way you'll need a new power supply. I'd pick up a decent one somewhere and test it, but I recommend not skimping much. You might want to get a higher wattage one to accommodate future upgrades in case your hardware is fried. After my case-accompanied POS PSU fried my last mobo, I got a nice Rosewill unit I knew wouldn't crap out on me anytime soon. Then again, if you aren't planning on building your next computer, I might not even bother.

I will cry if anything else got damaged. Recently upgraded ram and graphics card :[

Well mine wasn't even effected, so I wouldn't worry too much.

I've had a broken PSU once - it started to heat up like mad and I kept getting "low power" messages from my graphics drivers. Took it out of my PC and I swear you could fry an egg on that thing. Cheap PSUs are scary

Also,

Why would the computer completely shut down if the case button connector was the problem?

If the button that turns the computer on isn't properly connected to the motherboard, nothing will happen when you press it. I've had the cable come loose on a computer once and it took me ages to figure out where the problem was because the case cables were hidden inside the cover.

I understand that Penguinboy, but I was asking why would my computer completely shut off while playing l4d if the problem was just the case cable coming loose? Can that single cable actually mess with the whole system if it became unplugged while the computer was on?

Nah. It's a possible reason that you can't turn your computer on, not the reason it turned off in the first place
Not really a common occurrence, just threw it out there because it's happened to me.

I got a new power supply and the computer actually turned on. However, it gets stuck at the initial screen where it gives the computer specs. Sometimes it says press delete for setup and sometimes it recognizes the hard drive and says OK then gets stuck there. Another problem is I can't use my keyboard. When I connect it the lights blink once then it just doesn't work. I tried booting from an XP cd but it continues to stay at the screen with the computer specs. :[

When you say that you "reset the cmos", what exactly do you mean? Did you do it from the computer itself or did you actually do a hard reset on the motherboard itself? Doing the hard reset can mess up custom hard drive configurations, happened to me once but I think that was an older system. This in turn would basically screw up your startup config and your system won't boot. (don't tell me it don't happen people cause it did for me)

Just a thought.....

The power supply was my first guess but since you have already replaced that I am not sure what else to tell you. I had a ram stick mess me up for a few days before I took it to a shop and the guy simply unplugged it and the computer came on no problem. Try unplugging things one at a time.

peace.dunivan

the keyboard may need to be connected before you turn it on for a proper startup if it's ps2, i think, but i have no idea about new computers and usb keyboards...

[/stab]

Turns out the ram went bad. Put in an old stick and it's up and running. Of course another problem arises: ethernet device isn't working, so now I can't connect to the internet. Kill me now

sure you don't have a short on the motherboard? Didn't you say you just got the RAM? And the Ethernet cards are pretty durable so I don't just see that just going out--probably fried too. You may want to check your whole system, i.e. voltage and make sure everything is in spec. You can check some of that from your cmos menu but a professional with a volt meter would probably be better.

peace.dunivan

Yea the ram is brand new. Newegg sent me a bad batch of the same ram which I had to send back to get this batch.

Uh, I bet you forgot the ethernet drivers... Or do you already have XP installed?

Does the thing even show up in device manager?

The drivers worked fine before the crash. None of my files or programs were changed and I even tried reinstalling the drivers from the cd I use every time I reformat. Yea the connection I want shows up in device manager with a yellow exclamation point next to it. I've tried disabling and uninstalling it then rebooting but the yellow ! remains.

Bought a pci ethernet card and everything is good now. Guess the onboard one pooped out. Thanks everyone for your help.