PC Fans turn on but the PC itself doesn't

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Expand view Topic review: PC Fans turn on but the PC itself doesn't

Re: PC Fans turn on but the PC itself doesn't

by TDRR » Fri Dec 14, 2018 10:58 am

drfrag wrote:Certain old cpus would burn in only a fraction of a second that's why the thermal protection circuit is built into the cpu itself, solutions built on the motherboard were too slow. Modern cpus would turn off inmediately. Also if the speaker is working you will get beeps without ram.
On the motherboard led it's there only to remind you to turn the power off.
The speaker is working and i tested it using Doom and FreeDos which made it beep relatively loudly, but for some reason it didn't beep at all when i didn't have ram.

Makes sense, kind of weird my CPU heated up slowly. (Not too slow, like 15 seconds or so)

Re: PC Fans turn on but the PC itself doesn't

by drfrag » Wed Dec 12, 2018 2:59 pm

Certain old cpus would burn in only a fraction of a second that's why the thermal protection circuit is built into the cpu itself, solutions built on the motherboard were too slow. Modern cpus would turn off inmediately. Also if the speaker is working you will get beeps without ram.
On the motherboard led it's there only to remind you to turn the power off.

Re: PC Fans turn on but the PC itself doesn't

by wildweasel » Wed Dec 12, 2018 1:31 pm

TDRR wrote:
drfrag wrote:That's very wrong, that led only means the motherboard works partially. Removing the heatsink could kill old cpus and even the motherboard, now they throttle and even turn off. On the other hand if there's a speaker or buzzer you'll get beeps when there's no ram installed.
Forgot to reply to this one. The speaker didn't beep so that wasn't helping, and the heatsink killing old CPUs is okay if you are fast enough (if the CPU heats up, quickly unplug your CPU/ turn off your PSU and that's it)
I would not put a lot of stock in this advice, as a CPU is a relatively expensive component to be almost literally playing with fire with.

Re: PC Fans turn on but the PC itself doesn't

by TDRR » Wed Dec 12, 2018 12:29 pm

drfrag wrote:That's very wrong, that led only means the motherboard works partially. Removing the heatsink could kill old cpus and even the motherboard, now they throttle and even turn off. On the other hand if there's a speaker or buzzer you'll get beeps when there's no ram installed.
Forgot to reply to this one. The speaker didn't beep so that wasn't helping, and the heatsink killing old CPUs is okay if you are fast enough (if the CPU heats up, quickly unplug your CPU/ turn off your PSU and that's it)

Re: PC Fans turn on but the PC itself doesn't

by drfrag » Fri Dec 07, 2018 1:03 pm

That's very wrong, that led only means the motherboard works partially. Removing the heatsink could kill old cpus and even the motherboard, now they throttle and even turn off. On the other hand if there's a speaker or buzzer you'll get beeps when there's no ram installed.

Re: PC Fans turn on but the PC itself doesn't

by TDRR » Thu Dec 06, 2018 8:07 pm

R4L wrote:I'm curious. How did you figure out it was a RAM problem? I'm wondering if you used MemTest or not. A client machine here at work had the same symptoms, MemTest reported no errors. Ended up having to run Window's System File Checker utility to fix corrupted files.
Of course i didn't use MemTest, because the PC didn't turn on in the first place :P

I figured it out because since the fans turned on, and the power LED did too, that meant it wasn't the motherboard nor the power supply and the only remaining culprits were the CPU and RAM.

I removed the fan from the CPU, tried to power on the PC and the CPU heated up, which meant it still worked. So from there it was obvious that it was a RAM problem.

Re: PC Fans turn on but the PC itself doesn't

by R4L » Thu Dec 06, 2018 3:27 pm

I'm curious. How did you figure out it was a RAM problem? I'm wondering if you used MemTest or not. A client machine here at work had the same symptoms, MemTest reported no errors. Ended up having to run Window's System File Checker utility to fix corrupted files.

Re: PC Fans turn on but the PC itself doesn't

by TDRR » Thu Dec 06, 2018 11:29 am

Brought a new RAM module and now it works great, not even the eraser trick saved the faulty module :P

I plugged the old RAM module in Slot 1 and 2 and neither gave results.

Re: PC Fans turn on but the PC itself doesn't

by TDRR » Sat Nov 24, 2018 7:33 pm

drfrag wrote:It's unlikely the module has failed just when you've connected the hdd. You need to press firmly on both sides of the module at the same time or else the side you inserted first will come out. Also the PSU must be turned off to be safe.
You never know, it had been a couple weeks since i last booted it up before connecting the HDD, and with the absurd amount of power failures (And then the following few moments comes a spooky over-voltage) might have damaged it.

I'm going to try again, but the module itself is already plugged in as firm as possible.

Re: PC Fans turn on but the PC itself doesn't

by drfrag » Sat Nov 24, 2018 12:43 pm

It's unlikely the module has failed just when you've connected the hdd. You need to press firmly on both sides of the module at the same time or else the side you inserted first will come out. Also the PSU must be turned off to be safe.

Re: PC Fans turn on but the PC itself doesn't

by TDRR » Fri Nov 23, 2018 7:59 pm

After a bit of analyzing, i figured out it was a RAM problem, which really sucks as they are very expensive around these parts.

Re: PC Fans turn on but the PC itself doesn't

by wildweasel » Sat Nov 03, 2018 12:00 am

How powerful is your power supply unit?

Re: PC Fans turn on but the PC itself doesn't

by Kappes Buur » Fri Nov 02, 2018 5:33 pm

TDRR wrote: Even if i unplug the IDE HDD it still won't boot, any ideas?
Thusly, I assume that this is a second drive.

Did you set the 2-pin jumpers to assign the IDE drive as Master or Slave.
http://www.alyon.org/InfosTechniques/in ... mpers.html
So, the first IDE drive would be jumpered as Master and the second IDE drive would be jumpered as Slave.
If not set correctly it may result in what you are experiencing.

From what I remember, the two drives also need to be assigned correctly in the BIOS as Master or Slave according to which port (A or B) they are connected.

If that does not help, then tell us the make and model of the new drive.

Re: PC Fans turn on but the PC itself doesn't

by hitmanx » Fri Nov 02, 2018 3:28 pm

I don't know if this is any use but I had a weird problem that lasted for a little while before fixing itself, my computer also wouldn't boot,

In my case it was solved by unplugging the power completely and letting it completely drain and then plug it back in and try again,

Just a quick 10 second thing you can try, it helped me :shrug:

Re: PC Fans turn on but the PC itself doesn't

by drfrag » Fri Nov 02, 2018 3:20 pm

Sometimes you get continuous beeps for a memory problem sometimes you won't.

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