Hi.
Brand new to this sort of community.
Gday to you all and thanks if you can help.

Got given an old pc by a mate and thought i'd use it for my kid.

It's a P4 1.7GHz with 640MB ram PC133.
Win XP.
Intel Desktop Board D845WN.
NVidia GEForce FX5500 256MB.
Version 4.34.20.69.00
HDD is 4.3GB. Think he swapped the original one out.

My intention was to up the RAM and obviously the HDD.

Problem is, when it starts up, it shows some brief BIOS info, the graphics card details & RAM only (I thought they usually showed more info?)
It then starts to load windows, the black low res XP screen comes up with the blue bar underneath then the screen goes blank after about 30 seconds and the monitor says there's no video input but the hard drive is still clicking away randomly.

I managed to get the bios screen up by disconnecting the power cord to the HDD (mains off!) and had a flick thru the settings but couldn't see anything that stood out but i am a real novice at bios related matters.

Anyone with any ideas would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Hello Westie and welcome to PCHelpForum.

I just looked at your system specifications and apparently you can fit upto 3 gig RAM SDRAM 168 pin.

Here is the manual:ftp://download.intel.com/support/mot...n/A6513601.pdf

Ok lets rule out or test a few things before the Tech Team jump in with some ideas.

Now you say she is old,this proberly means the BIOS battery has not been replaced in some time.These need to be replaced every two years at least unless an issue like power outage kills them.

Is time and date correct?

Remove BIOS battery for two minutes then replace.

Firstly power her off and open her up and give her a good clean inside and check all cards,cables etc are fully seated.

Then see if she powers up...

Can you please note any error codes you may see and check on screen and in BIOS settings that the hard drive and other hardware shows up.

Load fail safe and defaults in BIOS.

If she still is not working then take her to bare boot.

Disconnect the hard drive,CD/DVD rom remopve all RAM except one stick,disconnect floppy.

Now see if she boots with one stick of RAM slot nearest the Processor.

Then remove that stick and put in another and see if she boots.Do this for each stick in turn.

Are all the fans spinning?

Try that and see what happens.

Hi Jelly Bean.
Thanks very much for your indepth reply.
It is much appreciated.
I shall go thru the various steps and see what happens.
At this moment i'm only running up the HDD.
I've disconnected the floppy as i'll prob never use it anyway.
I've disconnected both CD/DVD drives as one of them trips it off anyway.
All the fans are spinning ok, 3 of them, PSU, graphics card & CPU.

The HDD is only an old 4.3GB so i got hold of a 80GB HDD to put in it. When it's in and I turn it on, the PSU makes a short fizz noise and no power/boot up. When I use the 4.3GB drive, it powers/boots up normally...
I'm wondering if the PSU is on it's way out and isn't able to power the 80GB drive?

Thanks again for your time in trying to help me, much appreciated..!!

This sounds pritty much like a PII or a PIII?

You just have to try and eliminate hardware issues,long process some times.

I know a PIII can power up a 80 gig hard drive.


But as it appears there has been a bit of sopping and changing things around the power supply may not be powerfull enough.

If you can post the hardware this may help.

JB.