PC Problems

It's a dell desktop with athlon ii processor, it has windows 7 home premium.
It's an older Dell Inspiron Desktop Pc with an Athlon II Windows 7 Home Premium, that's all I can tell you, sorry.
When I load it up, the screen is all black. I can't get into the pc at all.

Can you get into the BIOS setup and does that show on the monitor?
If no, first try another monitor, than another video card, then another motherboard.
If yes, come back here and tell more.

Kees

No, I can't get into anything, the screen is 100% black.
I think the hard drive fried, there is no disk activity, and Windows is on the hard drive, so that explains why it wouldn't boot.

The BIOS is on the motherboard, and doesn't need the hard drive, so if you can't go into the BIOS setup (I assume you know how to do that on your machine) it's not the hard disk.

Remember you don't need a hard disk to boot from an optical disk or a USB-stick. And without all of those (just the PSU, motherboard with CPU and RAM, monitor) it will show the "no boot device" message on the screen, after displaying the BIOS identification.

If your level of knowledge about computers is as low as this thread suggests, you'll really need to do it systematically. See if any of the hits of https://www.google.com/search?q="dead+pc"+fix point you in the right direction.

Kees

I boot from the hard disk, Win 7, 64 bit, Home Premium. I cracked it open, and ran HDMI onto a tv. Black screen. There is no disk activity. This leads to tell me the hd is messed up, because;
- no disk activity
- boot is from hd, so is everything else

is this correct? I'm getting a 100% black screen, I can't interact with ANYTHING.

this could be something as simple as your HDMI isn't working properly.

Watch the screen right after you turn it on and press the key it says will let you enter the BIOS setup. If that happens, then you can move on from there. Start at step one.

Normally when you first boot up you can press F8 about once a second and get an option to boot to Safe Mode; have you tried that? Also I like Kees' suggestion to try getting into the BIOS setup. I'd check the connections to the monitor also to be sure you don't just have a loose connection. Also check the lights on the front of the box. Does the power light come on? If so does it stay on? How about the disk activity light? Does it blink, indicating disk activity? If you get power and disk activity, that makes me suspicious about your monitor, how old is it?

I don't get disk activity at all. The monitor came with the PC. Maybe a hard drive issue?
Before it completely dumped, it would blue screen. Maybe it's the hard drive, because it doesn't boot Windows at all. But if I replace the hard drive, I have no OS :/

Are there any fans running? Specifically the main PSU (power supply fan)? If not, it could be one of several things, firstly the PSU itself, that is a fairly common failure. If you don't know how to test, I'd take the tower to a competent shop and have them run a test. But it could also be something else, first guess, PSU.

Yeah all the fans are going. I cleaned out any dust/dirt. It turns on as well, but it would be nice to replace the PSU. I think the display is the problem, though.

What I do in this kind of situation is to boot from my Linux Mint DVD or flash drive. There're plenty of versions of Linux you can get that will work; my preference is the Mint one because it's the closest to the Windows user interface. You can get it here:
http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php . That will give you the ISO file you can use to create the DVD. You could also put it on a flash drive, but that takes an extra step, and the DVD will get you up and running in 3 min. without any need for a hard drive. If it will boot up, then you will know that everything is working except for your hard drive.
Now as to what to do for your Windows system, if you don't have a full system backup, you've now learned by way of the school of hard knocks why you can't afford not to. When you've gotten your system back like you want it, I urge you to get yourself an external hard drive and a good 3rd party backup program. You can set it up to do everything automagically at the time and frequency of your choice. 1 TB external hard drives are about $50 these days and a really good FREE backup program is the Easeus Todo Backup Free. That can save you a lot of time and frustration the next time something like this happens. Sooner or later it happens to all computers for one reason or another.


Good luck.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I did some research, and I'm pretty sure the motherboard is kaput
There is no display, but the PC turns on, but the screen is 100% black. The Hard drive fails to boot up Windows, probably because the motherboard dictates all interactions and such, right? It is now "dead." Do you think if I replace the appropriate motherboard, it will work again? .

A new motherboard certainly is a big help if the old one is kaput.

Kees

Yse of course.
I'm planning to replace many parts of the PC, and I would like some help, if you can.

1) Any way to narrow the problem down to a specific hardware part? I don't want to spend my 400$ in upgrades only to turn it on and find out I haven't fixed the problem.

2) Can I replace; the motherboard,CPU, add a GPU, and still boot from my old HD? Will Windows still run?

3) If the above is correct, can I move Windows and a couple of .exe's to a SSD, and replace the old HD with a new 1TB one?

Thanks in advance...

This sounds as if buying a totally new PC is a much better option. With a motherboard change you need to buy a new Windows license and that's about the same price as a PSU, a case and DVD-drive combined. Add a new motherboard, CPU, RAM, GPU, SSD amd hard disk and you have a totally new PC.

Kees

Alright then. My plan was to pretty much build a new pc, but salvage some of the old parts.

1) Can I salvage my old 8GB ram? It's made by Dell.

2) Can you tell me how I can get Windows 7-8 for really cheap? I mean, come on, how many times do I have to buy the same thing over and over?

3) Can I put the new parts in my old case? Or do you know where there are cases for cheap that don't look so generic and boring and bad?

1. Unlikely that a new motherboard will accomodate old RAM, and if it does, it will be slower than with new RAM. Check the specs of your old and new mobo.

2. Windows isn't cheap. Have a look at amazon.com for example: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_0_11?url=search-alias%3Dsoftware&field-keywords=windows+8.1&sprefix=windows+8.1%2Caps%2C302
You don't buy Windows, you buy a license. What did you pay for the license on your old PC?

3. Yes, if everything fits.

Kees