[wplug] diagnosing hardware - machine no longer working ?

[Larry Daberko]

I've had one or two systems that wouldn't boot up after a long downtime.

Zach wrote:
> One thing I did notice that seems odd is that the
> DVD-ROM drive has power and I can eject the tray however neither the
> CDRW drive appears to have power (no light comes on and I can't eject
> the tray) nor does the FDD seem to have power (I recall the light
> coming on in the past during bootup).
What I would do is:
Disconnect the drives from the mainboard and possibly pull out any cards 
plugged in.  If the system still doesn't display anything on the 
monitor, swap the video card.
If unplugging things fixes the issue, plug each card and drive back in, 
one by one, and test.  I've seen a bad CD or hard drive keeping a system 
from booting up due to a short (or bad signal?) 
> card i can and see if that makes a difference? Or should I buy the
> cheapest ATX case I can with a similar motherboard and CPU and then
> swap in components one by one?i
Do the troubleshooting steps first before spending money on a new 
case/board unless you needed an excuse :-)
> If the CPU or RAM died would the BIOS still work and give me messages
> assuming the video card is fine? Maybe the whole mother board was
> somehow damaged? Everything looks fine to my eye, I checked that each
It's possible that CPU or RAM issues may kill the system, or cause it 
beep on bootup.

LBD