I have a OLD PC that use to work. I was going to set it up for my 7 year old daughter to use. Plugged it in and turned it on. I get nothing on the screen and the key board lights are out. When I turn it one the keyboard lights blink once only and thats it. Any ideas. Not really in the budget to go by a PC for a 7 year old right now. ITS A p3 550, 40 gig hard drive. Before I put it up, I had just put XP on it and also a new hard drive. It was working fine.
2007-01-27 07:18:55 · 4 answers · asked by BirdDog 1 in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Other - Hardware
It sounds like your video card or monitor. Make sure the cable to the monitor is plugged in properly and listen to the sound that the pc makes when you boot it up. Do you hear the hard drive spinning? If not then there are more issues at hand.
Try pressing the caps lock button after you pressed the power button. If no lights are showing even then, you are looking at some serious issues. It can be anything from the mother board to the hard drive.
2007-01-27 07:24:07 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
My guess, fyiw, is that the BIOS battery on the machine died and the BIOS reset, forgetting all of your settings. Turn on the machine, hold down the delete key to enter the BIOS, and make sure the hard drive settings and other hardware is correct. Time and date don't matter as if you get Windows to boot it'll set them.
It would be interesting to know how many beeps your BIOS makes when you turn the computer on. A missing video card is a certain amount o fbeeps, a missing keyboard another. One beep (the usual for a working system) and no video could indicate a bad or simply loosely inserted video card. Nothing at all could indicate a very fried BIOS.
As the other poster said, put your ear by the machine and turn it on. Can you hear a whine that increases in pitch? If yes, that's a good sign, the hard drive is spinning. Does the hard drive make little clicks? That also could be a good sign, it's reading data off of the hard drive, trying to do something. Whine but no clicks could be the fault of the BIOS or the drive.
Just my 2 cents!
2007-01-27 22:56:04 · answer #2 · answered by dug 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
I like Ben's reply...Could you let me know the OS....40 GB says that it should work...means its not vintage yet....I should be able to help....
Thanks.
2007-01-27 15:44:30 · answer #3 · answered by sanjaykchawla 5 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Try kicking it, or hitting it with a baseball bat. This could work.
2007-01-27 15:27:00 · answer #4 · answered by Ben 1 · 0⤊ 2⤋