the other day i sprayed some dust out of my pc and my power supply began to make a hissing sound. later that night my pc just shut off completely. i figured it was the power supply as the computer would not turn on at all, so i purchased a new power supply, equiv to the one i already had. well i replaced the old one with the new one and now my computer won't load past the gateway screen [screen with the intel logo, bios menu/settings options]. everything is froze and won't boot past. any suggestions? im using a friends laptop to type this question and need a solution quickly. thanks a lot
try reseating all your ram sticks, videocard & any other cards. reconnect all cables to drives & motherboard. clear the cmos as have found that sometimes it kickstarts a stubborn system.
could the blowing of the dust cause any hardware problems? i replaced the cpu on this system about 2 years ago and would hate to believe that the cpu is trashed again. would it be the hard drive or motherboard?
blowing dust would not cause that but installing new psu or other parts could jar loose any other cards or connections so reseat them.
ok its done but still have the same problem, should i try the process again or is ther something else to do now
I would suggest that you try a basic config uration. To do this all you need is 1 stick of RAM, hard drive and graphics card if your motherboard doesn't have one built in. If the PC starts into Windows then add one peice of hardware remaining until the problem reappears then you'll know what the problem is caused my. I personally think its the RAM. Does the hard drive making a 'whirling, clicking' sound?
no there isn't any noise cominng from the hard drive. if the hard drive went bad what would be the symptoms?
The hard drive would be making a whirling, clicking sound meaning its on the last legs. If the drive totally died then after the BIOS the pc should say something like 'no boot media....' or something similiar. (I can't remember exactly LOL) Try doing the basic build like I said and let me know. Do you live in Manchester, UK?
its not the memory or the hard drive, and ive done everything you have said, but still have the same problem, nothing will load, it wont even getnto the bios.
here is what i found, an external hard drive was blocking the pc's ability to boot. i unplugged it and it works fine now except for a problem with my video card. after unplugging and resetting the cmos i had to reinstall the video card. my pc has a built in video card on the motherboard which i dont use. the graphics card is an ATI radeon 9200 lx and now when the monitor is connected to ATI card there is no tool bar or desktop items on the screen, if i switch the connection to the onboard video card the toolbar and desktop items are displayed but in a very large size. can you explain what i need to do??
