very strange problem: pc turns on on its own without working

[quinton]

i have been away for xmas and i got back yesterday.

upon turning my electrical socket on my pc powered up on it's own without me starting it! strange i thought. so i let it turn on, but it didn't open up windows it just powered up the fans etc like it usually would but nothing came up on the screen.

i held in the on button to turn it off but that had no effect so i had to manually take the power lead out to turn it off.

i have tried it many times since but it remains in that same strange state and i have no idea what is wrong or how to rectify it, does anyone have any ideas on what the problem might be?

many thanks in advance for any help, i really need my pc back lol and this is a big problem for me.

seasons greetings,

quinton

 

[cboucher]

Your PSU may be going out, but try resetting the CMOS first. There is usually a jumper on the motherboard to do this. If not, remove the the battery from the motherboard for a few minutes and then put it back and try powering everything back on again.

 

[quinton]

Your PSU may be going out, but try resetting the CMOS first. There is usually a jumper on the motherboard to do this. If not, remove the the battery from the motherboard for a few minutes and then put it back and try powering everything back on again.

thank you

what would the jumper look like please?

 

[iPwn]

Look on the motherboard next to your BIOS battery, there should be two little prongs sticking out. You can use any 'little black' jumper to accomplish this. I've used a screwdriver to connect the prongs as well so however you create a circuit between those two prongs will work (as long as it's not part of another circuit!!)

If you're not finding what I'm talking about, give us make and model of your motherboard and I can probably look it up.

 

[quinton]

Look on the motherboard next to your BIOS battery, there should be two little prongs sticking out. You can use any 'little black' jumper to accomplish this. I've used a screwdriver to connect the prongs as well so however you create a circuit between those two prongs will work (as long as it's not part of another circuit!!)

If you're not finding what I'm talking about, give us make and model of your motherboard and I can probably look it up.

thank you very much, i have just taken the coin cell battery out, will this do the same job or should i try the jumper as well?

thanks again

 

[iPwn]

Taking the battery out and leaving it out for about 15 minutes will accomplish the exact same thing.

 

[quinton]

taking coin battery out of motherboard didn't make any difference i'm afraid

any other things i could try?

i would really appreciate any help with this i am totally screwed without this pc, thanks guys

 

[detox1]

that same thing happened to me about a month ago, it was ether my motherboard or CPU, I borrowed spare parts, power supply, video card, ram, off friends to try and narrow the problem down,
nobody had a 775 cpu or motherboard I could try. So I just decided it was time to upgrade. I replaced the two and it worked.
But that just turned into a major overhaul. and I've replaced everything but the tower and cd rom.

 

[quinton]

that same thing happened to me about a month ago, it was ether my motherboard or CPU, I borrowed spare parts, power supply, video card, ram, off friends to try and narrow the problem down,
nobody had a 775 cpu or motherboard I could try. So I just decided it was time to upgrade. I replaced the two and it worked.
But that just turned into a major overhaul. and I've replaced everything but the tower and cd rom.

motherboard or CPU?

wow it's an old pc i doubt i could get those parts even if i knew how to change them

thank you all very much, if anyone else has any ideas or suggestions as to other things i could try, i would be most grateful

seasons greetings, happy new year to you all

quinton

 

[detox1]

That's just it, I never found out which one of the two was broken.
Its not all that hard to swap out parts in a computer, couple of screws and everything basically just unplugs.
Its slightly less delicate than you may think, but you still need to be careful.

can you find the model number on the motherboard? It'll help to see if there is a replacement that you could pick up cheap.