Help! desktop will not boot

[charlenebrown (imported)]

worth putting the top fan on (low speed setting) as this removes much heat build-up. As you probably already know, heat rises

charlene

[fhunter]

I am not in Germany. I am in Southern California. It has been quite hot recently.

I have a super tower case with three fans in front pushing air in. I have two fans in the back pushing air out. My power supply has two fans that push air out. One of the fans in the back was not running but I replaced it. I have been running my computer with the side off for years. There is a place at the top back of the case for a 92 mm fan. I do not have a fan there.

Removing the cover usually messes with proper HDD cooling. On my machine there was little improvement with processor temperature, but HDD heated up at least 5 degrees, compared with the closed cover.

[Paolo]

I do great in the winter. Set the tower next to an open window. Tower block window to the room,and sucks cold air into itself.

[IbPervert (imported)]

I am not in Germany. I am in Southern California. It has been quite hot recently.

I have a super tower case with three fans in front pushing air in. I have two fans in the back pushing air out. My power supply has two fans that push air out. One of the fans in the back was not running but I replaced it. I have been running my computer with the side off for years. There is a place at the top back of the case for a 92 mm fan. I do not have a fan there.

Your profile says Germany so that is were I thought you where at!

Make sure the fans are all blowing in the same direction thus blowing air through the computer and not just into. The side panel is off on my case simply because of laziness with a touch of paranoia! It seems when ever I put the side panel back on something happens and I have to take it back off. Heat will cause the computer hardware to age faster especially hard drives...in my old case I had (on each hard drive) a fan that was specifically made for that. My new case is the Antec 300 (http://www.antec.com/Believe_it/product.php?id=MjQ=) and I put two 80mm fans right in front of hard drive row ....they blow air into the case then the fans at the back suck (mmmmmm suck ...think homer simpson) the air out the back.

[ibnmichael (imported)]

It does indeed sound like overheating, but take a good look at the capacitors as well. This same behavior is exhibited when capacitors begin to fail Look carefully at the tops of the caps to see if they are expanding, becoming dome shaped as it were. Also look for signs of black or other colored gunk leaking out the top or bottom. If you see any of this, strongly consider getting another motherboard, unless you are handy at replacing caps, in which case repairs can be effected for a few dollars.

[Riverwind (imported)]

You said it was several years old, how about dust. How bad is it inside?

Get a can of AIR and blow all that dust out of it.

River

[curious_guy (imported)]

You said it was several years old, how about dust. How bad is it inside?

Get a can of AIR and blow all that dust out of it.

River

It is over six years old. I ordered it in early May 2003.

As I mentioned in my first message, the first thing I did was to clean off the dust and replace the one case fan that had stopped running.

It has not locked up since I set the FSB to 100. I will replace the mother board soon. This time I will probably get one with all solid polymer capacitors. I would like to get one with three PCI slots but all the AMD mother boards at Newegg with solid caps have only one or two PCI slots.

[Riverwind (imported)]

It is a little more expensive but they sell I think better stuff you might look at General NanoSystems at http://www.nanosys1.com/

Good people to work with plus for me there local.

River

[Prudence (imported)]

When the computer locked up, sometimes the screen would be blank. Sometimes it would have diagonal streaks filling the whole screen and sometimes it would be frozen with the mouse cursor not moving.

Have you tried replacing the Video Card? We had several video cards in the older computers at work overheat. They will lock up the whole system. They will also often make the diagonal lines you mention -- classic symptom.

If you are good at tinkering with hardware, sometimes you can fix the Video Card by taking off the heatsink, cleaning out the old heatsink paste, putting some new heatsink paste in there, then put the heatsink back on. At work, the bad Video Cards had almost no heatsink paste on them (litterally between 1/8 and 1/4 inch in diameter -- way too little). Once I put a decent amount of heatsink paste on them, many started working fine again.

Also, make sure your Video Card fan is spinning -- they will often slow or stop especially on a computer that is 5+ years old. You might also be able to replace a worn out fan... But sadly they often use these custom/proprietary fans. You can't fit a normal fan onto the card. So you can't fix it unless you are really creative.

Of course it is a whole lot easier to just buy a new Video Card. If you aren't a hard-core gamer, any cheap $50-or-less video card will work (can buy them from most websites that sell computer hardware).

[Mac (imported)]

Since it will not boot, have you tried replacing the little system battery that starts the Bios?