PC won't start after blue screen

[jkoll]

Hello all. I have a Gateway GT5032 Desktop PC running Vista Ultimate. I recently installed a program called Paragon Partition Manager. After setting it to format one of my partitions it asked me to reboot; which I did. The Partition Manger screen came up and it began to do its thing. After a minute or two I got a BSOD and the PC began to restart. It was late and I didn't feel like messing with it anymore so I held the power button until it shut down (big mistake). The next morning I pushed the power button and it started for a second and shut back down. After repeatedly pressing the power button it stayed running. Unfortunately, that's all it did. The power light came on, the cabinet fan began running and the video card fan began running, but I didn't hear any hard drive activity, no start up check, nothing on the monitor (it stayed in sleep mode) and no lights on the keyboard. After reading several posts on this forum I took out the CMOS battery for several hours, removed the memory modules, and disconnected the hard drives all with no effect. I'm starting to think I might have fried the Mobo, but I thought I'd check if anyone out there might have any suggestions before I look into replacing it. Thanks.

[Serunson]

What are the numbers and letters on the BSOD? To diagnose the problem, we need those numbers! The numbers we are after are the ones in bold represented by X's:
0x00000XXX

edit: you can also take a picture of the BSOD, or note down the entire chain of numbers that appear.

[jkoll]

Unfortunately, my PC was set to automatically restart, so I didn't have time to note any numbers or codes.

[windowxp]

{F10} boot up your computer in safe mode and device manager uninstall the device you are having problems with. to get device manager click start. right click my computer. click properties. then click on hardware then click on device manager

[jkoll]

My PC never gets to the point where I can boot into safe mode. There's absolutely nothing on the monitor at any time. It will not post at all. Thanks.

[Serunson]

What power supply are you using? The problems may lie there perhaps. What's the voltage of your PSU?

[jkoll]

It's a Bestec 300W PSU.

[Serunson]

What graphics card do you have in your machine? If it is quite a recent one, then chances are 300W aren't going to be enough to power that and all the other components in your computer. Try to use a PSU of around 400W that you know works (borrow one off a friend) just to see if the PSU is causing all the problems.

[jkoll]

I had a nVidia 7600 graphics card installed. However, my board has on board graphics as well, so I removed the graphics card and attached my monitor to the mainboard video output. I reattached the power cable and got the same results. I, also noticed that sometimes now when I plug the power cable in I am not able to get the computer to do anything (no power at all). Would you tend to think it might be the power supply after all?

[Serunson]

What i would do to eliminate all possible problems:
>Boot the machine with 1 stick of RAM at a time going from each slot, to see if a bad stick of RAM is causing this, or a bad RAM slot.
>Boot without any of the PCI cards in, keep the Graphics card in though.
>Check the the PSU is connected to everywhere that it should be.
>Boot without any USB devices attached to the machine.
If all of these changes produce the same result, it would point to a PSU issue. A thing to check, have you got the correct voltage setting on the back of your PSU? Can be an easy mistake to miss, and would cause your computer to not boot correctly.

[jimbojone]

def. disconnect everything from the machine, as per the previous post. i would also unplug the power supply from the board, and hold in the power button for about 10 seconds. plug the supply back in, and unplug it from the wall socket. once again, hold the power button while its unplugged. go ahead and plug it back into the wall, see what happens, its very possible the capacitors in the PSU need to be discharged. if it dosent work after this, it is almost most def. supply. could also be motherboard, but supply seems the more likely choice.

[windowxp]

What type of computer do you have? eg.: dell, samsung, hp etc

[Serunson]

What type of computer do you have? eg.: dell, samsung, hp etc

I have a Gateway GT5032 Desktop PC running Vista Ultimate.

Please read previous posts :P

[windowxp]

How much mega bytes do you have left on your hard drive. You are suppose to have enough for the avast.

[jkoll]

I have tried unplugging and holding in the power button for several seconds. Today I tried a different PSU with similar results. I'm not sure exactly how much space is left on the drive, because I can't access them. However, I'm pretty sure they have plenty of free space. I'm leaning towards a Mobo, but after doing some research on the web I can't seem to find a replacement. I have a uBTX board with an AMD Athlon X2 4200+ processor. The only uBTX boards I can find on the web are for Intel processors. I may have to replace both board and processor.

[jimbojone]

yea, u replaced the supply, then its def. mobo. thats too bad. and somewhat ridiculous that you can't find a replacement for a 4200+ :(

[jkoll]

Yeah, that's what I get for buying a Gateway. Never again.

[Comodore]

Gateway isn't necessarily a bad company... I still have a few gateways that are about 8 years old, still running fine- albeit slow.

Did you check to see if it wasn't the hard drive? That seems most logical to me- the partitioning software killed the drive. Plug it into another machine and see if its recognizable. If it is, then its probably the motherboard- which sounds likely. But you should always start from square one!

Are any capacitors on the motherboard bulging or leaking?

Just a few thoughts- probably a bit late for you.

Happy New Year!

--The Comodore

[jkoll]

No, Gateway isn't necessarily a bad company, but I can't understand why they would use a board you can't buy anywhere. Thanks for the tip about the hard drive. I'll try it in my other machine tomorrow and write back the results.

[Comodore]

True, that. Try to find one as close as possible, if needbe?

--The Comodore