computer died, help

[Bum]

my computer made a load buzzing noise through the speakers and the screen froze. I powered it down and back up and it worked ok. Then the next day, same thing but when I power it back up, only black screen, nothing, not even a windows boot screen. The monitor and keyboard act like the are not getting a signal. Usually the keyboard has a little light for the num Lock and caps lock, but not now. I can hear the hard drives and fans running, but the computer is dead. Any ideas? I bought a new video crad today and tried it but it still willnot run.

[ASWnut101]

First, be sure the power cable is plugged in tight. All of them. Then, the next time you get the screen to come up, start windows in safe mode. Run an Anti-virus scan, remove any un-nessasary programs (like some cheap crap you might have downloaded from the net), then open up command prompt. type in "CHKDSK /f" without the quotes, press enter. Press "Y" when prompted to schedual the operation. Re-start your computer, and let the check run. If the computer keeps doing this or it won't restart again, take it in to a CPU repair shop. It costs money, but it may be the only way to fix it.


Also, before you do any of this, how old is your computer?

[Bum]

3 years old. Cables are all tight, and I put in a new video card.

[ASWnut101]

Then, hell. Take out the new card and put the old one back in. Make sure it's in there absolutaly right and tight! Don't break any of the 'pins,' and see what happens. What card was it and what was your computer? (ie. Dell E-340 or whatever)

[3Jane]

It might just be a faulty memory stick or even something simple like a date cable between the board and the hard drive. It could of course be a failure of the hard drive it's self, but work systamaticaly before you start spending money on the expensive items like hard drives or processors. Sometimes system wide problems can arise from easy to fix faults. A while ago, a single faulty sata data cable in one of my two hard drives was causing all kinds of problems before I finaly traced it. From the sounds of it though, I would try diferent memeory sticks as a starting point.

[SUBMAN1]

The symptom of buzzing - one of two things - CPU fan or Power Supply. If I were a betting man, I'd opt for the fact that you have a bad PSU since a frying PSU will buzz - replace it.

-S

[ASWnut101]

Will that cause a minimal power operation?

[Iceman]

I'd go with subman's diag...also on older Motherboards the bios battery often dies...symptom of that though is clock keeps getting it's time off...you set it to correct time and next time you look it is off ,eventually computer will not boot....suspect bios battery...$1.25 at any store....
but does sound like Power Supply with the noise....not much else to make noise cept hard drive...

[cobalt]

I hope your cpu fan didn't fail and your core melted ];