So I get home this afternoon, powered on my PC, and walked away to get something while it booted. I come back, and my monitor is still off, though the tower's power light (and for some reason the main CD drive light) are on. Checked the monitor plug, it's connected fine. Everything seems ok, but nothings showing up. I force it off (holding the power button) and try again. Same deal. Nothing. I opened it up to take a look. The CPU and case fan turn on and seem to be working, though the CPU fan sounds a bit off. It's making a slight crackling sound (imagine if the fan was just barely hitting the tip of a sheet of paper) that I don't think it was making before. My roommate tried to help, unplugged just about everything but RAM and the main hard drive, and still nothing (and I assume even if it was one of those, it'd at least boot up and / or beep). It's about two years old. I hardly turn if off, even at night, unless I'm going away (like this weekend). Was working just fine just Saturday, no problems that I could notice. Now its dead. I took it to CompUSA for a quick check (they wanted $100 + parts to fix, so I walked away), the guy confirms that the power supply is good, but the Mobo's not posting (the power indicator is on, but no beeps or anything). I don't know that much about PC internals so I don't really know, but I'm really afraid my CPU fried [sad]. Some specs if they help: 1.2 Ghz Celeron (don't laugh). I'm not even sure about the mobo (the whole thing was a budget purchase from some unknown online retailer) 768 MB SDRAM (512 + 256) PC133 250 Watt ghetto power supply (that's what it came with and has worked fine) Geforce FX 5200 Standard floppy 2 CD drives (one regular, one burner) 2 Hard drives (20 & 80 Gigs) Ideas, suggestions? Note: I'm at school right now so I probably won't be able to post again til tomorrow. Thanks

Just because there is some power going to your computer doesn't mean it works properly. But if the case fan and PSU fan and even CPU fan are working, then I guess the power supply is fine.

If you really think it was your CPU that went. To replace it with the same chip would cost $33 or so for an OEM.

its probably either your mobo, cpu or ram, in order of decending likelyness.

if its the ram, it probably isnt both sticks. try them seperately.

if it isnt the ram, its your mobo or CPU. doesnt matter which, if youre going to be buying stuff you need/want to replace them both.

Take out the RAM and boot it up, and tell us if the mobo beeps.

If it doesn't, you're a little screwed.

If it does, at least we can help narrow down the problem.

Oh, and does the hard drive spin around all nice-like when it's booting? It could be a dead videocard.

- cd

First of all, confirm you have a PC speaker in your case that is plugged into the board, or you have an onboard speaker. After that, try the following:

-Unplug every drive from both the PSU and the MB. This means HDD's, DVD's, FDD's, etc. Try and boot the machine. It almost certanly won't work.
-Remove the graphics card. If you now hear beeps from your PC speaker, the graphics card is most likely faulty. Try re-seating it, and if it persists, get a new card.
-If that doesn't work, leave the graphics card out, and remove all the RAM. You should hear some beeps from the PC speaker. If you do, it's most likely the memory. Try re-seating it, using one stick at a time.

If none of this works, it's either your MB or your CPU. It can be very difficult to determine which one is to blame if you don't have other compatible parts to test against. Considering your hardware, it might be more cost effective to upgrade, if that is an option.

@nprz: The guy at CompUSA plugged the power into some do-hicky and said that it was good. Beforehand I'd also swapped it out with an extra power supply I had (same wattage) ... same deal.

@SirLuthor: Nope, no drive noises. Though the main CD Drive "busy" light remains green, though it doesn't sound like it's moving at all. No beeps whatsoever.
I have dual monitors, neither works with either the card or on-board video.

@Eelco: Yup, tried both sticks in various combinations. Heck, I tried no sticks (I did this once, and it beeped at me, this time nothing)

@Code_Dark: See above.

@Nemesis: I do have on-board speakers (and tried plugging in regular speakers) and tried unpluggin everything. I even took out the CPU. It looks ok as far as I can tell. But still nothing, no sounds, beeps ... just the one power-indicator light on the mobo.

The fan sounds off. It's louder than I remember, but would a faulty fan cause it not to boot? Unfortunately I don't have extra parts (asking around, but no luck so far) to try to narrow down the problem.

It's funny (ok, not really) because I'm actually in the process of upgrading. I ordered parts last week and am waiting on a few more packages to put together a whole new tower, so it's not a huge loss. But this one was going to my bro as a hand-me-down, so it'd be nice to give him something that actually works.

I'm going to try replacing the fan, mobo and cpu (in that order) and see what develops.

Thanks for help everyone.