OT Computer very slow to start

[Greg Kamer]

I know this is off topic, but this the the only place full of experts I know
of. I'm sure with the wide range of experience here, someone might have a
solution....

My friend all me this morning in a tizzy.... Seems her computer is really
slow to start. By that I mean when she pushes the power button, it takes
sometimes as long as a half hour before the power light comes on and the the
computer starts....

She said once the power light comes on, the computer boots up as quickly as
normal though....

Any ideas on this one?

I know she had a problem a few months ago, where the computer would not read
that hard drive. After messing aronud with it for a while, I finally tracked
the problem down to a bad hard drive ribbon cable and replaced that. Has
worked fine since, until today...

Problem actually came up this week end, but she just got around the calling
me...

Thanks in advance for any help/suggestions....

 

[Joe]

Sounds to me like her power supply has went south. I would
try replacing that. Could be the switch too.

 

[Greg Kamer]

Well I just got back from her place. Brought the box home with me.

When you push the power button, power goes to the board, as indicated by the
fans turning....

But nothing else happens... There is no boot beep, nothing appears on the
monitor (though the monitor status light is green) nothing, just the fans
turning and the power supply running.

My thought is the processor went tango uniform....

Does that sound right?

 

[Malke]

Well I just got back from her place. Brought the box home with me.

When you push the power button, power goes to the board, as indicated
by the fans turning....

But nothing else happens... There is no boot beep, nothing appears on
the monitor (though the monitor status light is green) nothing, just
the fans turning and the power supply running.

My thought is the processor went tango uniform....

Does that sound right?

Time to do major hardware diagnosis. There's no way to give you a more
specific answer through a Usenet posting! If you can't do the hardware
testing yourself, take the box to a good local shop and have them do it
for you.

Malke

 

[Greg Kamer]

Well I just came back from her house. I explained to her that I suspected
the problem was either with the processor or motherboard, but I could not be
sure. I explained I did not have the dionagstic equipment needed to tell her
for sure where the problem was. I made a few phone calls on her behalf to
some local computer shops and found one where I could pick up a combo
motherboard/processor for about $130.00 bucks.

I had brought her computer box to my house and tired hooking it up to my
monitor with the same results I got at her place. Power would go on, fans
would turn, but the amber light on the box would not change to green nor
would my monitors power light change from amber to green. I tried using my
video card, swapped out hard drives, disconnected/reconnected hard drive
cables, blew everything out with canned air, with no sucess.

Swapped out power cords, ribbon cables, memory chips, pulled everything out
of the computer expect the hard drive and video card, still no happiness in
Ritzville.

After she considered the price of the motherboard/processor combo compared
to the cost of taking it into a shop and paying to have it checked out, she
decided this would be the best way to go. I told hewr I could not gaurantee
this would solve the problem, but she wants to go ahead. This is her only
computer, and she dosen't want to wait a week to have a shop get around to
checking it out. So.......

Again, thanks for all who responded. I'll try to post back with results
tomorrow.