Re: Monitor
Posted: Aug. 7
You could try figuring this out yourself if you're OK playing with the hardware a bit. Sometimes it makes more sense to buy another computer than take it to a computer repair shop, so if that's the case, you might try fixing it. At worst, you end up with a computer that still doesn't work and a better knowledge of what makes things tick.
If this is an expensive computer, I wouldn't suggest tinkering without a little background knowledge. You'll be happy to know that all your files are more than likely still safe. All you need to do is connect your hard drive to another computer.
There are a few easy and relatively cheap to solve failures that could be causing this, so you might be lucky. I have one question though. Since the monitor usually doesn't beep, are you sure it might not be the tower doing the beeping?
One possibility is that you might have a fan not working. Listen for fans in the case, and make sure that all fans are working because there is often more than one. Note that if the fan is dead the processor might be gone too, but that's not definite.
Your processor might not be working. Open the computer and find the processor. It's covered by a heat sink and you might have to move a fan to get at it. Turn on the computer while holding a hand near the processor and heat sink. It should become very hot after about 15 seconds. If it doesn't, wait a little longer, but never leave the computer on like this for more than a minute. If you don't feel any heat in that time, your processor is either not seated correctly in its socket or is dead.
Unplug and reattach all the cables and cards on the inside of the computer to make sure all the connections are tight. I suggest doing them one at a time so you remember where they were plugged in to begin with.
Find another computer compatible with your video card and install the drivers for the card. Take your video card out and try it in the other computer. If it doesn't work, your video card probably doesn't work either.
Try using a different monitor with your computer. You probably did already, but sometimes people forget things like that.
Remove all outside hardware other than a keyboard and monitor and remove your drives, memory, and sound card. If that works, plug things in one by one.
The only other thing I could think of would be your motherboard. There isn't any good way to check this one and it's not as cheap as the others. You're probably better off with another computer. Still, if you're bent on fixing this thing, you could buy a motherboard and install it. It doesn't take an extreme amount of work, but you'd have to be careful of static electricity and where the cables get plugged in.
With that, I think I've recommended checking just about every component of your computer except the power supply since it sounds like that's working okay. Best of luck if you try fixing this.
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