Recurring Puzzling Boot Problems

[morphism13]

I am running WIN2K on AMD 1.2 GHZ T-Bird, Molex Radial Fin Cooler, ASUS A7M266, 2 x 256 MB Crucial DDR Dimms, 40 GB IBM HD, DVD Drive, CD R/RW, and an ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon/Voodoo 4 4500.

I have had problems with the computer not booting, it turns on, the fans all power up, the screen makes the little static noise like it is going to turn on, then the monitor shows a blinking green LED. Nothing else happens, no beep codes, no display. I changed the video card from All-in-Wonder Radeon to Voodoo 4 4500. I thought this fixed the problem but after a few weeks it happened again. I have tried booting with just video card, ram, and hard drive, but it still doesn't work. The computer was tested on multiple monitors, so it isn't the monitor. Please give me any advice, this is driving me absolutely crazy.

Thank You,
Scott

[Bovon]

This is a long shot in the dark maybe. I had a simular problem awhile back with an AGP video card working it way up just a little bit at the rear...before I noticed this however, I took the card out and cleaned the contacts with a pencil eraser, cleaned up the eraser residue with a lint free cloth and dampened it with alcohol..plugged it back in, and it seemed to work ok...for a couple of days. It was then that I noticed that the rear of the card had worked up just a little..I pushed it back down, and it worked a few hours. I took further notice of what was going on, and loosened the screw where it was mounted, and the bracket came up a little so that when it was screwed down, it placed a strain at the rear. I bent the bracket so that when the card was seated good front to rear, the bracket fit just right..the screw was replaced, and no more problems. It appears that the card must be seated completely and stay there. Some new AGP cards now have a latch down feature behind the AGP socket to keep the card seated fully in the rear, so this must be a problem with AGP cards.

I also had one monitor, a KDS 17" that just would not work with certain video cards. It would come up, then go black...the LED would blink ect...I never did figure that one out.

[userserver]

Gateway had a pretty hard time with AGP cards being partially unseated when screwed down. workaround was to leave the screw out.

Dell had a spate of AGP cards coming unseated during shipping. The girls installing the cards just didn't push hard enough. Nothing quite like paying extra shipping to get a dead system delivered to you very promptly.

Originally posted by Bovon
...I also had one monitor, a KDS 17" that just would not work with certain video cards. It would come up, then go black...the LED would blink ect...I never did figure that one out.

Probably had a flyback transformer that couldn't handle a very wide range of refresh rates.

[escyld]

It doesn't sound like a problem with the video card. Test: Try pulling out the video card and seeing if the comptuer boots up (beep/HD sounds).

I've seen this happen randomly, sometimes clearing the bios helps. Maybe the CPU isn't sitting right. Sometimes its a problem with the Power Supply.

- Escyld