My PC crashed and will not start up again! Help please?

[prancingmonkeys]

Hey. I was watching a film in Media Center yesterday and suddently it just froze. The picture on the screens (duel) stayed the same and I could not get my pc to respond to anything, not even Ctrl Alt Del. So after giving it a min to see if it would recover I decided to restart it by the power button but it just turned off at first touch. (Usually have to hold for a few seconds)..

Ever since then, when I power it up, all the lights and fans go on but then instead of the sounds im used to, the fans seem not to speed up as much and then nothing else happens. No beeps, fans at constant speed, no signal to the monitor. etc.

Has anyone got any idea what the problem might be? The green light is on, on my motherbored suggesting that power is getting to it?? i think.. I had the power supply replaced a couple of months ago as I had a simular problem before. But before the fans did not turn on, so I doubt its the power supply..

I will try and get the details of my machine filled out on my profile soon, but im not sure on the exact details atm as i cant start it up.

Any help or advice would be appreciated.

cheers.

 

[prancingmonkeys]

and I forgot... I took the cover off just to check everything was plugged in and nothing had come loose. Everything seemed fine apart from there was an unbelieveable amount of dust. It had built up so badley on the motherboard fan/heatsink that the fan did not turn without friction. So I cleaned out all the dust from that fan, and the two graphics cards and tried again and still nothing. All fans still turn on but sound a little faster now but nothing else happens still..

Could all that dust of damaged something?

 

[Rik]

Sounds like you have cooked it. A fault like that can be very hard to trace.

First off, is there traces of a burning smell anywhere?

Secondly, have a look at all the can shaped capacitors on the mobo to see if any have domed or leaked.

 

[raybay]

Failed hard drive, cpu fan, CMOS battery, video graphics card, memory module, or power supply... or damage caused when you cleaned it.
Get some cans of difluoroethane gas (Dust Off, or equivalent), to clean everything ... at least two or three cans. I hope you didn't use a vacuum cleaner or a blower. Look for anything you pulled loose when you cleaned it.
It is sometimes helpful to find a way to test each of those components.
Remove everything you do not need, such as sound card, modem, ethernet card, Firewire card, etc.
Do you have a floppy drive in that machine. If you do, you could disconnect the hard drive, and boot to a floppy windows 98, 95, or me disc... just to see if that changes anything.
Remove each memory module, one at a time, and attempt a reboot after each.
Remove the video graphics card, and insert any other card... pci, or whatever, or use the video port on your motherboard.
Borrow any other power supply that has the right connectors. You are not trying to run for an hour, but just to test what works.
Same with a cpu fan. I would just buy a cpu fan and some thermal paste. Cheap. Fast way to test and fix.
Motherboards seldom fail. I would look there last, as these other tests will point you there if negative elsewhere.