PC has taken a vacation

[tjoris]

puke: hello. quite new to forums of any sort. but, having a bit of a prob: about four days ago, my pc has taken to not booting properly. the fans come on, and the LED lights for the cd-rom and CPU light up, but the the LED lights for the CPU stays orange. This is followed by a three-second whining (almost grinding) sound from inside the CPU. After which the LED light just stay orange. I can hear the fan and drive running, but there is nothing. the monitor doesn't even register that the pc has been turned on.

i shut off the pc by pressing in the power button. i waited and tried again. same. so, powered down again and unplugged the pc. when i plugged in the pc just came to life and repeated the same thing (mind you, i haven't switched on yet). ive been all over my tech books and surfing the net for answers to this quandary, but i keep coming up with nothing.

can anyone help?

 

[Nodsu]

The only place a grinding noise can come from, is the hard drive. Open up the computer, start it up and pinpoint where the sound is coming from. If it's the HD, try unplugging that and see if the machine boots.

 

[Frank Smith]

What does the Orange Lite indicate (reference your Mobo manual)

but the the LED lights for the CPU stays orange.

And like "Nodsu" said HDD's make Grinding noises and some Fans will... but NOT CPU's. Many systems will NOT Start if the CPU Fan is below spec speeds... saves the CPU from "Frying" :hotbounce

 

[tjoris]

pc has taken a vacation - reply

puke: my apologies, when i said "grinding from the CPU" I meant from within the case itself. Unfortunately, the pc is second-hand and quite old. i don't even think they make manuals for my pc anymore. it's a gateway p2 350mhz. it was free and i figured i could use it until I finish the one i'm building up.

thanks for all the replies. i'm on my way home now to put to practise the suggestions here.

 

[tjoris]

pc on vacation - reply (again)

btw, i should probably mention that this has occurred about 4 days ago. back then, i plugged and un-plugged the power cord. eventually, the pc began working. upon, reflection, im wondering if messing with the power like that was a good idea. i read that the most power going into any electrical item is when one turns it one. i don't want to fry anything (if i haven't already :dead: ). any advice on this would be helpful as well. of course, i probably won't get it until tomorrow, since im leaving work now--much dependent upon my getting my personal pc back to living standards.

thanks again!

cheers!

 

[tjoris]

pc has taken a vacation (re-re-reply)

okay, im home now, one the same said pc that has taken a vacation. upon arrival, the first thing I did was try and start the pc. Same thing. So, I removed the cover and reseated the ram. I switched a hard drive power plug from (p5 -which I never use, but for some reason I used it) to P2 (whether this matters or not I've no idea--probably not, seems to simple). Anyway, with the cover still off, I plugged in the power supply. I noticed immediately that the pc didn't just turn itself on. Familiar with this action as being a good thing, I proceeded to turn on the pc. It came on just fine as you can read.

However, I'm still not completely happy. I want to know what's causing this incidious power problem because I know it will happen again. It's only a matter of time. I'm considering ljust logging off and eaving the pc running from now on. i heard this is a good idea, at least until summer when my room because the equivalent of a small sun and there is no short in power outages. Previously, I've been leary of leaving my pc running when I'm not around because I like to worry about serious damage being done to it should something go wrong. I've yet to invest in a good back-up system, being poor and all.

Anyway, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. If you need me, I'll be backing up some files.