Nothing happens at boot up.

[rod]

XT SP2
Turned on our sons computer this evening,
the fan is heard, the yellow light for disk is on,
screen is black, and nothing is responsive.

If we press the on/off button it will not shut
down and we have to turn off at the wall.

The dvd drive will eject, that is all that works.

Where does one begin to troubleshoot this?

Thanks.

 

[Alias]

XT SP2
Turned on our sons computer this evening,
the fan is heard, the yellow light for disk is on,
screen is black, and nothing is responsive.

If we press the on/off button it will not shut
down and we have to turn off at the wall.

The dvd drive will eject, that is all that works.

Where does one begin to troubleshoot this?

Thanks.

Laptop or Desktop? If Desktop, it could well be the power supply.

Alias

 

[Nonny]

XT SP2
Turned on our sons computer this evening,
the fan is heard, the yellow light for disk is on,
screen is black, and nothing is responsive.

This isn't an XP problem, it's a hardware problem.

"the yellow light": what is that? The power light? Does the computer
have another light that shows hard drive activity? Is it blinking?
Can you hear hard drive activity?

If so, you probably have a dead monitor. If you video card died, you
would get some beeps from your computer when you turn it on.

If we press the on/off button it will not shut
down and we have to turn off at the wall.

Many computers require you to hold that button for 4 seconds for it to
shutdown the computer.

 

[rod]

G'day Alias,
desktop

BTW that's XP (cringe)
Is it possible to check the power supply?

Cheers
Rod

 

[rod]

"Nonny"

This isn't an XP problem, it's a hardware problem.

that's good news.

"the yellow light": what is that? The power light? Does the computer
have another light that shows hard drive activity? Is it blinking?
Can you hear hard drive activity?

It has two lights, green for power and yellow for HDD
The yellow comes on instantly, no blinking

If so, you probably have a dead monitor. If you video card died, you
would get some beeps from your computer when you turn it on.

I disagree, the monitor if fairly new, and being unable to press the
on/off button for it to shut down is weird
we hold the button down for 20 seconds...nothing.
have to turn off at wall

 

[Alias]

G'day Alias,
desktop

BTW that's XP (cringe)
Is it possible to check the power supply?

Cheers
Rod

Sure, pull out the old one and put in a new one and see if that fixes
it. I suspect that XP doesn't have anything to do with it.

Alias

 

[Alias]

"Nonny"

that's good news.


It has two lights, green for power and yellow for HDD
The yellow comes on instantly, no blinking



I disagree, the monitor if fairly new, and being unable to press the
on/off button for it to shut down is weird
we hold the button down for 20 seconds...nothing.
have to turn off at wall

That *really* points to the power supply.

Alias

 

[rod]

"Alias" and "Nonny"
Thanks very much for your attention to our plight
we were extremely worried, and your comments helped a lot

Son was working, on this machine,
(he had a science program to submit tomorrow)
when we went to investigate the colour of the lights on the broken computer
we accidently left the machine on.

Suddenly 10 minutes into waiting for your reply,
"blink"...the computer comes on.........."Yay"

The screen offered two messages
WZCSLDRZ.exe entry point not found the procedure entry
point apsinitialize could not be located in the DLL wlanapi.dll

and........

"you have files waiting to be written to the CD"

Everything seems to be OK
Yesterday son tried to burn a 2.5gb disk onto a normal CD
so perhaps that process somehow blocked the machine.

when the computer blinked on the yellow hard drive light turned off as well

Cheers to both you guys
Rodney

 

[w_tom]

Everything seems to be OK
Yesterday son tried to burn a 2.5gb disk onto a normal CD
so perhaps that process somehow blocked the machine.

when thecomputerblinked on the yellow hard drive light turned off as well

Everything you have posted implies either a software defect or a
hardware problem. Worse, you symptoms are typical of a hardware
defect that has existed for months and that still exists.

Well, many simple procedures exist to find such defectives even
months ago. None have been posted here. It is up to you whether you
want to fix those future failures now by finding the defect. Process
involves analyzing each suspect with definitive tests. So definitive
that each component, subsystem, etc is completely eliminated as a
reason for failure - one at a time. Bottom line point - that defect
could have existed months ago because it is normal for defective
hardware to still boot a computer.