Computer will not boot or spin up drive

This is a tricky one and the type where I prefer to be looking at the machine itself. But here goes a long distance try. If the motherboard is dead or dying you wont get far; and this sounds like that may be the case.

the first thing to do is tocheck the connections for the LEDs, disconnect and reconnect cables for the power, cpu, and drives. Check that the cables are in the correct way and check both ends of the drive cables. Also check the CMOS battery. Check that all circuit cards are properly seatted. And check that the monitor is plugged in properly.

Another point worth doing before this is to make sure that there are no loose screws etc stuck under the motherbaord or lying around in the PC and get rid of the dust in it.

The next step is to disconnect all devices, reseat the cpu and memory, see if it starts to boot. If it does, then start adding devices one at a time and try to boot after each item is added. this way you will eventually identify the faulty device. Assuming the Motherbaord, RAM and CPU ar OK

Check to see if it has fuses, just because it runs for a bit don't mean it has fuses; all your above is classic no fuses but something else - like ciggerette foil around the wrong blown fuse. ther are lots of fuses and likely something is toast by now.

RIVER FREIGHT

eebywater,
Thanks for the advise, as directed I started pulling devices, only when the cpu was pulled did I start making progress.

After removing the cpu, the CDRom & HD both started responding and the HD led came on. A volt test on the CMOS batter proved it was good. I reseated all the PC cards in the box and the RAM. Once I re-installed the cpu, the drives stopped responding again. No video showed up while testing.

I'm still confused on this, and I don't have a spare processor to install. Any ideas? Thanks for the help.

eebywater's right on. No beep or monitor activity is not a good sign. Check power to the motherboard as well as loose cards/connections. Reseat RAM and CPU.

If this PC was working a few days ago and nothing has changed, it hasn't been severelyjarred, etc. I'd say it's a good chance that it's a dead motherboard or CPU. RAM would typically give beep codes, but it could be that as well...

Without getting any POST beeps or errors it sounds like a dead Mother Board.
If you get power when some devices are disconnected from the mobo, this could mean a short somewhere or not enough power from the supply. If you can try swapping the power supply with another KNOWN working one before replacing the mobo.

Thanks everyone,

I'm guessing at this point it is in fact the mother board. I pulled another cpu out of one of my production machines last night and installed it in the trouble pc after hours, and it still would not spin up drives or beep/show bios.

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