Hi guys, new to the forum.

Having problems with my PC, basically, it won't boot.

To cut a long story short, here's the chain of events. I replaced my 256MB of DDR RAM with two new 1GB cards, this was about 4 weeks ago and the PC was running great. About 3 weeks ago, the PC became very slow, it kept freezing and the CPU Usages was always very high, usually between 95% - 100%. Following advice from another site after I asked about this problem, I got rid of ZoneAlarm and Windows Defender and replaced them with other programmes less heavy on my resources. This done nothing and I still had very high CPU Usage. After more searching I came across something that said my CPU could be overheating, so I unscewed the side panels of and unclipped my heatsink and gave it a clean, I noticed there was alot of dust on the CPU aswell so I took that out, give it a little blow clean, placed it back in and clipped the heatsink/fan in. I put in the necessary cables in the back hit the power button, but nothing appeared on my screen. The 3 fans are working, as is the DVD drive opening and closing but all I am getting is a little red LED on the front on the PC, were it should be a yellow/green one.

Any help would be greatly appriciated.

Many thanks,

Scott.

I would double check all cables/connections to make sure you didnt knock anything loose during the cleaning process. Are you getting any beeps or anything during boot?

Are you gettting beep sound, usually comes if the RAM is boot up properly. If Ram is displaced from the slot, it may give continious beeps and sometimes no beep. try to reconnect your RAM

Nope, no beeps at all. Tried reconnecting the RAM but nothing, even tried the old RAM but again, nothing.

As above, no beeps, and tried reconnecting the RAM and cables.

One thing I have noticed is the heatsink feels a bit loose. Its connected to the motherboard and works okay and is still situated above the CPU bit it feels a little 'shaky' and loose compared to when I first removed it earlier on. Could this have anything to do with it?

Hi Scott,

>> The 3 fans are working, as is the DVD drive opening and closing but all I am getting is a little red LED on the front on the PC, were it should be a yellow/green one.

This indicates one of the following conditions:

- Processor is not installed properly or has gone bad or damaged ( check the pin sequence of the processor )
- Motherboard has gone bad ( this is more likely to happen ). Try placing the RAMs in another machine if possible and check.
- RAMs are not compatible in terms of their frequency match with the motherboard. Check the system specification detials.

FYI, If the RAMs have gone bad or are not installed properly your system will surely give you some beep sounds.

Thanks,
Bhagya

Hey guys, just a little update.

I took the PC to my local computer store, they had a look at it and the CPU was infact broken. As was my heatsink and motherboard.
Still not to worry, a brandnew HP PC with a spec 10 times better than my old one arrived this morning.

Sorry for wasting your time and thanks alot for the information,

Regards,
Scott.