What are your cords and connections for the hardware?

Ok, so I have a computer that my father and I built about a year ago. It has worked perfectly for about the full year until I graduated college and moved to a place of my own. This is where the problems happen.

When I finally got settled down and was ready to break out the computer, I happened to notice a rattling sound in the computer. Luckily I had not even turned on my computer as it happened to be because my CPU fan was loose and not connected. I immediately reattached the fan and then proceeded with set-up of my computer. After everything essential was connected, I turned on my computer. My computer began to boot up like normal, it ran through its system settings and then went to load up Windows 98. As it was loading Windows 98, the computer proceeded to freeze up and actually power down. The computer had never done this before! It just seemed to shut itself down.

After this happened, every attempt that I have made to restart my computer has failed. However, the problem is not as simple as the computer will just not start. It seems to be active and want to start up, but it just can not. When I proceed to turn the computer on, all of my fans turn on, my CD-Rom drive proceeds through its little set-up, and the hard-drive begins to make a few major spins and then just go somewhat idle. However, I have no audible beeps, the hard-drive LED does not respond after the initial depressing of the power button, my monitor stays idle, my disk drive does not respond, and my keyboard and mouse both do not become active at all. Overall, it just seems as though the computer is not receiving some major command or prompt, even though it is starting to go through the motions.

Since the realization of the problem about a week ago, I have since replaced, one at a time, the power supply, the motherboard, the CPU, and the memory. Nothing has proved valuable in solving the problem or helping to understand what is going on. All of the same observations and symptoms still occur. I have also, tried a number of combinations of hardware to try to diagnose the problem, such as having only the motherboard and memory plugged in, to using my back-up hard-drive, to making slave and master combinations of my hard-drives, all the way to the full set-up. Needless to say, I am out of ideas. In reality, the only thing that has NOT changed is my monitor, which seems to be active, the initial power cord (the black cord that connects the power supply to the outlet), the hard-drives (yet I have two, the main and a back-up and neither one works), and the apartment.

The only major changes that I can see is the traveling that I did with the computer (which ended up having the fan fall off) and my new apartment. I can not really see anything else different. Now for my question...do you have ANY advice what-so-ever with my situation? I am lost and in need of some major help/advice.

Thank you in advance!

This question was answered on November 2, 2003. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

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Try replacing some of the connections for your hardware and see wha happens

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Posted by Student of Katharine Gibbs School - New York on November 2, 2003

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