LO,

My brother is having probs with his PC. Example, the light on the CD drive stays on and the tray won’t eject, the HDD won’t spin up and there is nothing on his monitor. If we remove the ribbon cables from the CD it will then eject and if we remove it from the HDD we can hear some activity. He says that he just turned it off and the following day it wouldn’t work. It seems obvious that there is a major problem with the MOBO so can anyone shed any light on what’s wrong.

Thanx.

troubleshoot links http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/T/troubleshoot.html

Well thanx but I couldn't see anything there to help me.

Just as an update I think it might be the BIOS chip, perhaps that would cause this sort of problem.

well sounds like a psu problem. other than that mite be bad connection of the ribbon cables. also try reseatting all the ide cards and wires and make sure the the hd ribbon isnt shared.

disconnect the power to everything i.e all the drives, leaving just the video card connected. see what happens then. why do you think its the bios? were you flashing or trying to upgrade? if it is the bios then you are going to need somone to reflash the bios.


zybernut@hotmail.com

Make sure the Master/Slave jumper on the CD drive is set correctly. If the CDROM is connected to the same IDE channel with the HD, its jumper must be set at Slave.

Well I took the whole system apart and rebuilt it to make sure all the connections were ok. All IDE cables OK, all jummpers OK, all PCI cards removed only graphics and HDD left in and still nothing.

I think it might be the BIOS because there is absolutley nothing on the monitor, not even the BIOS screen and remember if the ribbon cable is plugged into the HDD there is no activity but if I unplug it I hear it spin up.

Don't forget guys this is not my PC, it's my brothers and he assures me he didn't do anything to it, just turned it off then the following day it was like this. I am beginning to have my doubts.

Anyway, I've given it back to him and told him that my technical opinion is "it's f##ked".

Thanx for the replys.

if the board has built in graphics and he is using a seperate graphics card then plug the monitor into the onboard graphics connection in case hes changed the settings in the bios or cleared cmos and it's set back to the default.if he's got and is using onboard graphics make sure the memory is in the first memory slot on the motherboard(dimm 0,dimm 1 depending on motherboard).
check the cable for the cdrom is around the right way e.g if the cable supports 2 drives then the end of the cable that is furthest from the middle connector is the end that goes in the motherboard.
also check cmos jumper is set to normal and you might as well clear the cmos while your there by placing the jumper over the required pins for a couple of seconds(1-2 normal,2-3 clear cmos but it should tell you on the motherboard) remember to put the jumper back on normal.
also look at the bios chip and see if the label is crinkled as that's a sign of an overheated chip.
hope it helps.