I've not had the best of luck with my old system as of late.

I had purchased an ATI Saphire Radeon X1950 agp video card in December. I decided to clean everything in my case from top to bottom with canned air and I pretty much reinstalled the whole system from scratch.

After about 4 or 5 months my PC started to crap out daily and more frequently as time progressed. Eventually I decided to remove the X1950 and see if that was the problem. I reinstalled my old Radeon 9200se and it seemed to work. I returned the card to MysteryByte only to find out there was no problem with the video card. Feeling rather upset and somewhat worried I returned home and reinstalled the X1950. Not 2 days later my PC crashed and would not go into post. The fans would spin and everything would seem to be in working order since no error codes or beeps would happen.

So I reinstalled the old 9200se yet again and still no post. I decided to give the PC the once over and found that my processor's heatsink pad had flaked off and a connection was causing my PC to crash. So I bought some thermal paste and applyed it liberaly(too much apparently) but that didn't work.

With the problem remaining I sold the X1950(which still worked) and decided to call it a lost cause.

Well after 1 month of no PC I was going out of my mind with boredom. So I tried to re-apply the thermal paste, thanks to a suggestion from my brother, and it worked. My PC was up and running for a month or 2 now and everything was great until this latest problem.

I was gifted a used(and supposedly working) ATI Saphire Radeon X1550 AGP video card from my friend(says he bought it here at MysteryByte).

I had just installed it a few miniutes ago and it shows me nothing but a corrupt display and wouldn't boot into Windows XP pro. So after some web surfing on my folks PC(the one I'm typing this message on) I found out it is an issue that only an RMA would fix(thanks ATI tech support).

"Well that sucks" I thought, so I reinstalled my old Radeon 9200se(yet again I know what a pattern right) and now my PC won't go into post. I get no error beeps. All cables are connected, nothing is burnt, bubbling, rusted, nor any of the obvious issues. All fans are spinning and the HDD even starts spinning but no boot screens, no Windows XP, heck my monitor won't even exit standby.

This is the same problem I had when the heat pad had worn off but the thermal paste had not changed nor had the heatsink been moved.

Needless to say I am at my wits end with this PC but thanks to my limited income I can't upgrade

I'm hoping that someone here may know of a good old spit and polish that might fix my current problem.

Sorry for such a long story but I thought you might want to know a little history on my PC before posting possible solutions. Oh and I'm a certified Computer Service Technician with a diploma from Compucollege(big whoop right) and have been working on PC's since back in the Tandy 1000 days(funny cause I'm only 24 ).

Here is the basic PC info some might ask for:
NIKAO 1285B (Black) Mid-Tower Case
450 PSU(came with case)
ASUS A7V600
AMD Athlon XP 3200+
512mb DDR ram x2(1 gig total)
ATI Radeon 9200se AGP Video Card
Western Digital Caviar 1600(160gb) 7200RPM ATA HDD
LG GSAH55N BLACK DVD±RW (20X+/-)DUAL LAYER


Thanks in advance for any insight and any help.

Matthew P.

i had a similar problem in the past.
did u try replacing the cmos battery and resetting the bios?
ive had all kinds of funky computer crap happenings. if u haven't tried that yet id give it a shot. if u don't have access to another cmos battery. just try resetting the bios via jumpers on the main board.

All i can think of is that tbh.I'd go with Rone's suggestion.


Good one rone!

Thanks for the suggestion ronedogg.

After resetting the bios via jumpers I still have the same problem.

I'll keep at it and keep looking forward to some suggestions.

No replace the battery.

It could be a old battery and a old battery can cause a inability to boot even. I remember seeing a problem like this in class.

It could be the fact that the cheapy power supply couldn't handle the extra load. And if the environment the computer is in is warm then your actual power available will go down. It's even more apparent in cheap PS's.

It does sound like the video card X1550 needs an RMA, had to do it with an old 9800 I had, that had similar issues.

And lack of "good" power can cause some bizarre problems with a machine. What all do you have hooked up to your PS that's drawing power?

I second the PSU not shaping up...The thing has to send a certain amount of power to everything in your box...if that power is just a tad too little...then your not gonna get a thing...It could just be dying of age...had that happen too..random reboots...then NOTHING...try unplugging your HDD, Optical drive, one stick of ram, any PCI cards fans (Besides cpu/vga)...basically just your GPU/Motherboard/CPU and try and post....

I'd say that's the problem.

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I tried replacing the PSU with a good one from a friend's PC last night, same with the battery and still no luck. I also tried running the system on a minimal configuration just as Maverick had suggested but still no luck.

I think that this time it is most likely just a fool's errand to get this thing running again. After all the Processor and MB are rather old in comparasion to the rest of the system. They could have just given up.

I think what I'll do is test each part in my friend's system then sell the working parts and toss the faulty ones.

I'll most likely post them on Kijiji but I'll also post them on these forums in case anyone would be interested.

Thanks for all the help.

Your problem sounds very similar to one I was having a few months ago:

http://www.mysterybyte.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=608

Unfortunately I bought a new system before I figured out the problem because I was at the point where I needed to buy new hardware in order to swap out components to test and I was due for an upgrade anyways. I also tried the CMOS battery though to no avail but there might be some other suggestions in that thread you haven't tried yet.

Could be bad caps given the vintage of the motherboard.

Thanks Flama22, Most of thos suggestions have been mentioned already...well except the burning the system part lol.

Could be Doc.

Oh and I posted all the working parts and some prices in the Buy and sell thread. Just a heads up but there is a 22inch LCD up for grabs

I'm pretty sure your monitor isn't the cause of the badness happening in your computer.

Oh it's not but since I won't be buying a new system after this I'm going to sell the monitor and try to buy a new TV to play my Wii on. I was using my PC with a TV card but that's not an option anymore.