PC Fans Working But Won't Start

PC Fans Working But Won't Start

All of us having a certain usage of computer in our daily activities have come across this annoying problem many a times. You put the switch on, start your UPS if any and the moment you press the start button computer fans starts rotating but computer refuses to start. Power light becomes orange, no error message regarding diskread or NTLDR, nothing but a dreadful darkness…few monitors shows ‘no signal’ for a change. To be honest there is no thumb rule so far to get rid of it, only possible way advised would be a step by step logical approach to figure out what has gone wrong.

1. Beep Sequence: listen to your computer carefully, which runs a Power On Self Test or POST at start up to check all the hardware. Finishing the test processor would, normally give a single BEEP. Which means the hardware needed to start your computer are working fine, just there is no display. In this case check your monitor, monitor power supply, monitor connecting cable and the slots for damages. Take out your graphics/VGA card, clean the contacts and place them properly in position.

Things get a bit complicated when the processor gives out almost inaudible erratic beeping sounds. Which means something is wrong with your hardware. Every manufacturer has their own beep codes which tell exactly what’s going on. Try to count the beeps and then refer to your BIOS manufacturer manual, or their web sites. The most common problem is caused by the RAM, which is sorted the moment you take the RAM out of its slot clean it as well as the slot. In a few rare cases RAM or its slots were found faulty or damaged mostly it occurs because of dislocation. Other beep codes may indicate a keyboard malfunction, extended memory failure etc. To deal with these follow the next procedure.

2. Cut down to Bare Minimum: After checking monitor and RAM if the problem persists or in case there is no beep sequence or there is one but you can’t figure out what it is about this has been proved to be the most successful way to find the trouble out so far. Open your processor casing and make sure your Mother board fan is running. If not then it could be a power supply problem. Normally in this case ‘run’ light will blink in an amber glow. Check your power cable and the slot it fits into. It could have been caused by a broken or a bent pin

Next disconnect CD rom, Floppy Drive Cable, Remove all input devices like Key board, mouse, pens etc. Remove all extra added rams other than the one you’re very sure about. Keep only the HDD where the computer would boot from. Start your computer. If it gives one beep and the start light glows green then it means your Mother board, processor and HDD is working fine. You can pin point the problem by adding the devices and drives one by one. In case it fail to start, its time to change your processor and Motherboard. Such trouble rarely occurs because of a HDD crash or malfunction, in that case most likely you would get an NTLDR or DISKREAD error. So good news is your data has a high chance to be intact.

3. Booting from different sources and other voodoos: In some cases it was found that the black screen was caused by a boot drive failure, with no error message. Try booting from a Windows CD or a magic CD if available. There has been several reports of recoveries after rituals that hardly has any technical explanation. One would be ‘Power Cycling’ – switch on and off your machine several times very quickly and then try to start or a complete voodoo – take out the power cable, keep start button pressed for a minute and then try to start it. No explanation but worth trying in hard times.