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[eerr]

The fans give a little spin and then nothing.

This is after i found it humming practically and had to unplug it.

What do I need to do to make it work?

Or do I need to scrap it?


Windows xp, quite old now, been having problems-but this is a surprise.

[Tellemurius]

Possible bad ram or expansion cards or the motherboard died. Start unplugging cards in the inside and removing ram chips with possibly replacing them for any effect.

[gimlet]

This is where it REALLY helps to have a pc speaker (hooks up to the motherboard, not through the sound card/outside speaker ports) - I moved one from old system to old system for this reason, then I found some cheap piezo disk speakers for like a buck apiece to stash until needed.  The speaker is used for the bios to give you a beep error code that can be really helpful.  If you don't have anything you can get one from Radio Shack for $5 or so.

Recent 'dead' pc causes for me:
- power supply failed, swapped in a new one and it's been cranking for another 2 years.  I was pissed becuase I try to buy pretty good power supplies and this one was only 4 yrs old.
- cpu heatsink pins are crappy plastic on socket 775 and have been breaking off over the years, I must have nudged the last remaining one loose and partially unseated the heatsink so it would hit thermal shutdown temperature in 10 sec to 30 minutes depending on room temperature.  swapped heatsink and it's been cranking ok for months

Try to find out where the humming was - was it a fan that seized up?  If it was the cpu fan or power supply fan that would shut it down quick - I've seen fans clogged with dust or pet hair, or just fail from age.  SOME you can clean and oil, some it's just easier to replace...

[BBear]

Computer will not start; there are a lot of things that could cause what you are talking about.

NOTE 1: I really didn’t put this troubleshooting in any order you should read the whole thing and do the easiest for you first.

NOTE 2: make sure you unplug before messing with hardware just turning off is not enough (you should ground yourself too by touching something medal).

1.   Bad hardware (usually memory or video card)

a.   Memory (try taking out all but one stick and putting it in different slots sometimes one stick is bad sometimes the socket is bad) I am hoping you have more than one memory card.

b.   Take out all PCI cards that you don’t need for starting (soundcard or network card) the only card that had to stay in is the video (the video card can also stop it from booting so if you have a spare swap it at some point)

c.   Power supply  could be the fans turning on even for a sec makes me think that it may be fine but don’t count on it could still be bad if you have a spare swap out also make sure all connections are firmly in place

d.   Hard drive/cd drive (I would disconnect until I at least got to the bios screen)

e.   What “gimlet” said about heat, make sure your CPU cooler is mounted and clean of dust been seeing a lot of computers lately that are so full of dust. Heat will shut you down fast also watch the fan if it doesn’t spin than that is a problem

2.   Bios

It is possible that the backup battery died and the bios settings got messed up for your hardware there should be a reset jumper. Make sure you unplug before moving the jumper (I burned out one main board from trying to reset it with it plugged in). once you move the jumper to the clear make sure you move it back

Having a speaker hooked up to your motherboard will help a lot. It beeps depending on the board manufacture to tell you what is wrong or right during boot.
 
Sounds most like overheating due to the CPU fan seizing up

[eerr]

The power/on off button becomes non-functional for any purpose.


It just glows blue every so often as if it completely failed to reboot- as it would from a temporary power outage.

And then keeps trying.

can't turn it on or off by pressing the button or wait. Holding in the button does NOTHING.

[nenjin]

Well either the pins connecting the power switch to the board are loose/going bad (unlikely) or the board is failing. (More likely.)

[BBear]

you can check the power supply by jumping out pins 15 and 16 in the 24 pin end

 link why type out something when someone else has already done the work
 
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/ht/power-supply-test-multimeter.htm

[Glacies]

Computer wont start

Make forum thread about it

on computer

BUT HOW WAS POST? 

[miauw62]

Smartphone, other computer...
There is a plethora of possibilities.