PCTech Forums

Well I have done alot of searching on this for about 2 months now. I have an older dell dimension 433mhz a 7 gig hdd 96mb sdram. Not a real big pc inside or out. I got it for free to try out some mods with and code on. For about a month or so it would either boot or just sit there with the power light and fan on and do nothing else. You could still open and close the cd rom tray but nothing else would happen. To cure this problem all I would do is power the pc off and unplug it for a couple of minutes. Then when messing around with the connections in the back i pulled the keyboard out an djust pluged it back in. This locked up the computer, and I had to hold in the power button to power it off. It hasn't booted since.

Now when i press the power button the power light comes on, the psu fan starts a little loud but after a second gets quiet but keeps running. I get no video, the hdd starts for a second but then gets no activity and the cdrom tray will still open and close. There are no beeps or messages as well.

To troubleshoot I tested it with another video card as the one with the pc is on the mobo, and tried the monitor on another pc and it worked fine. I then checked all connections, unplugged each one and plugged them back in. Then I shorted the pins for the power switch but still had the same result. I got out the multimeter and tested each plug on the psu, and each checked out fine, (red = 5v and yellow = 12v). I dont have an extra cpu or motherboard to test with so I haven't been able to check those but at the last hope I disconnected all devices except the memory and mobo and cpu and still got the same result.

I have looked at alot of possible solutions to this problem on other forums and on the net but I figured the little bit of background before the problem might help better diagnose the problem. I also have a sony vaio notebook pcg-fx310 that shows the exact same symptoms. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Also I just thought i would add that on both computers there was not any burning smells or any signs of burnt components.

Have you tried removing one or more of the RAM sticls (96mb sdram)?

You can also try removing all the ram and see if you get any error beebs.

Just before the pc finally died I had bot of the ram chips out so i could clean off a clump of dust around the corner of one of the slots. I dont know if I got some into one of the slots or not but I havent tried running it without any ram or one at a time yet. Was running late for work so i had to stop for the day. Will give it a try tonight though when i get off work. I have gone through most everything else. It is begining to drive me crazy.