I've got a computer question I figured I'd put out there to you guys. I think I may know the answer, but I'm asking just in case I'm wrong
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The description of "only a black screen" does not signal disaster on its own... there are other indicators you should look for.
When you boot, do you hear the fans and/or hard drive spin up? Do the LEDs on the front of the case light up?
If not, that could mean you forgot to plug in a power supply connector, or you have a burned out power supply.
If you do hear/see those things, then it will take some more investigation. For example in that case I might try removing devices one by one until I finally managed to see the "Press [blah] to enter setup", which means you can reach the BIOS. Then whatever you removed last is likely to be the cause of the problem.
I've definitely got everything hooked up to the power supply. The fans are running, and the hard drive makes noise, but after a while, it stops making noise. I think the initial problem is that I had the new DVD burner set to "master" instead of "slave," but I've switched that around, and still nothing works. I did manage to get a configuration where I got a flashing cursor in the top left corner instead of a purely black screen, but that's the best I've been able to achieve at this point.
I also vacuumed out the massive accumulation of dust that was in the computer. Do you think I might have bumped something with the vacuum?
I'm not at all superstitious, but there was a dead moth in the case that I vacuumed up. I'm wondering if he wasn't the glue holding the whole system together.
Check to make sure all your IDE cables & PCI/ISO cards are plugged all the way in and fit nice and snug.
If you still can't boot, try removing the hard drive & all the CD/DVD drives, and try booting with just the power supply connected to the motherboard. You should at least see the starting boot screen, and hopefully also the "Press [blah] to enter setup" prompt.
If you can at least make it to the BIOS, then you can narrow the problem down to one of your drives, either that one of them is bad, or that the configuration is somehow done wrong.
I mentioned your symptoms to Brent, and he said maybe you need to do a CMOS reset. I guess that's if you're feeling daring... it involves reading your motherboard manual (or looking very carefully at the board itself) to figure out the relevant jumper pins, and you cause a short between them. That's something I've never done, and it seems like the kind of thing where you really could kill your machine if you do it wrong.
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When you boot, do you hear the fans and/or hard drive spin up? Do the LEDs on the front of the case light up?
If not, that could mean you forgot to plug in a power supply connector, or you have a burned out power supply.
If you do hear/see those things, then it will take some more investigation. For example in that case I might try removing devices one by one until I finally managed to see the "Press [blah] to enter setup", which means you can reach the BIOS. Then whatever you removed last is likely to be the cause of the problem.
Reply
I also vacuumed out the massive accumulation of dust that was in the computer. Do you think I might have bumped something with the vacuum?
I'm not at all superstitious, but there was a dead moth in the case that I vacuumed up. I'm wondering if he wasn't the glue holding the whole system together.
Reply
Check to make sure all your IDE cables & PCI/ISO cards are plugged all the way in and fit nice and snug.
If you still can't boot, try removing the hard drive & all the CD/DVD drives, and try booting with just the power supply connected to the motherboard. You should at least see the starting boot screen, and hopefully also the "Press [blah] to enter setup" prompt.
If you can at least make it to the BIOS, then you can narrow the problem down to one of your drives, either that one of them is bad, or that the configuration is somehow done wrong.
I mentioned your symptoms to Brent, and he said maybe you need to do a CMOS reset. I guess that's if you're feeling daring... it involves reading your motherboard manual (or looking very carefully at the board itself) to figure out the relevant jumper pins, and you cause a short between them. That's something I've never done, and it seems like the kind of thing where you really could kill your machine if you do it wrong.
Reply
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