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General discussion

Looking for a possible quick fix

Mar 31, 2014 5:04AM PDT

My son brought me his old XP Pro system that I built for him a few years back....he wants to now give it to his four year old to learn how to use the keyboard and mouse instead of relying on the touchscreens of their laptop and ipads.

It powers up with a green light on the mobo, and if I take the small pinned power plugs off the various fans hooked to the mobo directly and plug them back in, they spin for a few seconds and then power down again. Nothing else other than the power supply powers up......no monitor, no hdd clicking sounds, nada.

I've hooked up a new power supply and it does the same thing. I replaced the battery, too and nada.

I don't have a new CPU to toss into it and I have no interest in swapping out a totally working mobo and CPU from another computer here and have talked them into letting me just give them that other computer instead since it is up and running and has XP Pro also installed on it. I would be adding a wifi networking card to either of these depending on which one they end up with.

I'm wanting to make a decision here quickly so I can get one of them online in time to get the last updates for XP installed on it.

So.....any ideas or suggestions for the machine that won't boot? My computer building days are done so if it doesn't sound good to me, I'll be parting that one out and salvaging what I think I can and be done with it.

Thanks....I can usually count on CNET forum members and expect I will be able to again, even if it's bad. lol

Discussion is locked

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Any details available?
Mar 31, 2014 5:09AM PDT

In the meantime do the usual inspections and tests. Google these.

How to inspect for bad caps?
PSU Green Wire Test.
The dead pc.

Bob

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I appears
Mar 31, 2014 5:49AM PDT

from everything I've been reading that if it isn't the CPU, the mobo is shot and since I have no spare CPU to test with, I'm not going to mess with this one any longer because all components except a modem card are built in/on board. I'll try one more thing (a new video card) but I'm not getting any beeps of any kind that would indicate a component issue like I normally would expect from video or ram issues.

Thanks, Bob

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does it have a beeper on it?
Apr 6, 2014 1:21PM PDT

a lot of mobos now don't even come with the cheapest piezo on them.