Blackscreen on shutdown and startup

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Kwaice

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Hello everyone.

First time poster, long time reader.

This week-end, my girlfriend's comp wouldn't shut down normally. Windows closes fine but the comp would keep running with a black screen, sometimes all night long.

Fans were spinning and it looked like the hard drive was working. I had to force the shutdown. It was booting up fine though, until sunday.

Sunday morning, she tries to boot her computer but all we have is a blackscreen. No post, no message, nothing. Fans are spinning normally but it looks like the hdd isn't doing jack.

Yesterday, i opened her computer and cleaned the dust (lots of it). Then i unplugged the graphic card, cleaned it up a little, plugged it back and the comp started fine the first time. No problems were found.

I thought i found the solution but when she tried to reboot it, the same problem appeared: it wouldn't shut down + black screen. And after i forced the shutdown, the same booting problem reappeared with the usual black screen and nothing going on.

I am at loss here. Could it be her hard drive passing away slowly ? I will check later today with another screen to see if i get anything but i don't think the screen is the problem.

Any help appreciated and sorry for my english as it is not my primary language.

Thanks in advance !
 
Update

Got back home and checked with the other monitor, same result.

I now notice that the fans are spinning at random speeds, sometimes they go slow, sometimes faster and the comp then won't boot.

It also somtimes shuts down completely when trying to boot then powers up again on its own.

Can it be the power supply ?
 
Can you test the power supply with a mutlimeter? Or do you have a friend with tech knowledge who can?
 
No i can't, but i can eventually bring the comp to a store that can do it.

Does it sound like it is the power supply only or could the motherboard have something to do with it ?
 
Always go with the simplest and the cheapest first which would be testing the power supply. I would also ask them to diagnose the harddrive. However, you could do this yourself by running the free harddrive diagnostics utility that you can get off of your harddrive manufacture's website. I know Seagate's Seatools is an ISO file that you burn to a CD and you insert it into your CD drive and it engages seconds after boot-up much like Memtest for your RAM. Western Digital also has a diagnostic tool that is excellent as well but I haven't used one in years so I don't know when to use it in the process.

Speaking of RAM I have had bad RAM do the very thing you are experiencing. It is easy to run Memtest on your memory. Its free and quite safe.

*** Do the psu first.
 
Thanks for the advices.

The comp is now going through a diagnostic and i will know in a few days what is wrong.
 
Updating the topic.

Got a phone call from the shop and it looks like it indeed was the power supply that was at fault.
They changed it and everything is okay.

Thanks for your help, Route44
 
Excellent! We're glad to hear that it has been fixed and thanks for getting back to us. And glad to be of help. :)
 
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