PC Won't Load Up

[drian]

Hey guys, first time poster here.

So I guess my dad was trying to install an external DVD burner, and when he plugged it in and put the driver CD in, the computer froze, and after restarting now nothing will come up on the monitor. The computer will turn on, but the light on the monitor remained orange as if no signal was coming in. After waiting a day, the computer would turn on with the keyboard plugged in, but it was not responsive to the ps2 keyboard when it was on the desktop, couldn't bring up the task manager or anything with ctrl alt delete, and then when you plug in the usb mouse, it freezes again, and goes back to the no display.I'm thinkin maybe a USB problem or something? The external burner is USB also. Can't get it to go into safe mode, I don't think it's taking input from the keyboard at all. The lights on the motherboard and case turn on with the power, but that's it.


PC with XP with SP2 I believe, a pentium 4 fairly new computer, maybe 3 years old or so.
Does anyone have any ideas about this?

 

[EXCellR8]

Does the system boot up properly when the external DVD drive is disconnected? You might have to disconnect all USB devices until the system loads windows and then go in and reconfigure each. I'm pretty sure you can't put the driver CD in the actual external drive until it's configured... that might be why it froze up. In order for those drives to work, certain drivers must be installed before they can be used so... put the CD in one of the computer's internal drives and try it again. If nothing works, the drive itself might be the problem.

 

[drian]

Nah I've tried disconnecting everything and it will boot up and go to the desktop, no progrmams will run, but if its just keyboard and monitor plugged in, it won't respond to keyboard commands, then we tried plugging in the usb mouse and it froze and crashed again and now it is back to not starting up at all

 

[EXCellR8]

Yea sounds like the system's USB interface got messed up somehow. If it's not booting up at all, try clearing the CMOS with the jumpers on the motherboard or pull the battery and wait a minute. Put the jumper back to the correct setting or reinsert the battery and see if that helps.

 

[drian]

ive never done that before... is it difficult... are there any risks i should be aware of when doing that?

 

[EXCellR8]

Clearing CMOS

ive never done that before... is it difficult... are there any risks i should be aware of when doing that?

Nope, all clearing the CMOS does is reset the settings in BIOS. All you really need to do is take note of your current settings so you know what to put back afterwards. Your motherboard should have a CMOS jumper that connects 2 out of 3 pins. All you gotta do is move the jumper over so that it connects say pin 1 and 2 instead of 2 and 3. Wait at least 30 secs for the settings to clear and move the jumper back to where it was. After that, you can turn the computer on, see if Windows boots up and reconfigure BIOS settings. You can also just pull the CMOS battery, usually located near the BIOS chip somewhere or in between expansion slots. Put the battery back in after 30 secs or so and turn the computer on. Don't touch any of the BIOS settings and see if the system boots into Windows normally.

 

[nickc]

Be sure to touch the case to discharge static electricity before touching any thing in the case as u can fry computer parts with almost no electricity.

 

[JordanR]

I would try turning off the power supply for 20 seconds to let the capacitors discharge. Also try moving/(unplugging to test) relevant PCI cards. If that doesn't work then maaaybe a repair-install could help.

 

[drian]

got it solved ... just cleared the CMOS and now its going fine... even fixed a problem I've been having for about a year with the DVD drive lol

thanks guys