My computer worked fine one night, but in the morning i went to turn it on and it wasnt working. I built my computer with a friend, i have a ibit IS7 motherboard and a pentium 4 processor. This happened once in 2004 and i took it to a computer repair shop and they would not tell me what they did, they just said they reset some chips and it worked fine. I already replaced that 3volt battery on the motherboard, i reset the jumpers on the motherboard, but im not sure if i did it right, cuz there are 4 of them. My fans turn on but my cd rom will not boot up and windows will not come on. I would love to just take it in to a computer repair shop again and help out in the circle of economy but i would like to figure this out on my own for future reference. Please if anyone could help me out that would be wonderful.

thanks
Jordan

It's possible something has come unseated, a RAM stick or the graphics card or some other PCI card. Best thing to do is check everything is seated properly in all the slots. When you power on listen for beeps from the BIOS a single short beep is what you're after this means the hardware has past the POST (Power On Self Test). If you don't get that. Remove everything and disconnect the CDROM and HDD(s) power and IDE/SATA connectors (whichever it is you have) Leave ONLY the CPU, 1 RAM stick (if you have more than one) and the graphics card. See if you can at least get the POST and the BIOS on the screen. If you get that start to reconnect your hardware one item at a time until it stops POSTing again. Let us kow how you get on.

I tried what you said, unpluged everything, just left the cpu, motherboard, video card, and one stick on ram in there. I did not get a POST beep. I tried this with both sticks of RAM also. Any other sugestions please??? thank you for your help. i deeply appreciate it.

This bit worrys me a little because, I have tried to download the manual but there are quite a few versions of the IS7 theres IS7-E, E2, E2G, G, M, V2. Which is yours? When you say you reset the jumpers did you use the manual to reset the CMOS jumper? (this resets the BIOS to default settings) We need to be certain the MOBO is set up correctly first.

Then:

does the CPU heatsink fan spin when you power on ?

Make very sure the graphics card is seated properly in it's slot, that the contact is good and free of finger greese and dirt, consider cleaning it with cotton wool bud dipped in white spirit (be very careful ideally you need to have anti-static wrist band and anti-static mat when handling components). Can you get hold of another PC? try your graphics card in another machine and see if it works there, same with the RAM stick and then the CPU a process of elimination to see if the components are the problem or if it's the MOBO. This other PC will need to have a MOBO compatible with your components obviously.