Monitor gives me big fat NO SIGNAL - EMERGENCY!! - Page 2

[LiTos456]

no it didnt do anything it just said The volume contains one or more unrecoverable problems..

[LiTos456]

what caused the hard drive problem anyway? I mean its kinda weird...and the no signal thing that i got again...i really dont want it to be that i killed my second ram chip but...

[caperjack]

what caused the hard drive problem anyway? I mean its kinda weird...and the no signal thing that i got again...i really dont want it to be that i killed my second ram chip but...

i have no idea as to why anything is happing to your computer ,because I'm not there to see inside the box ,see how its all hooked up,or how you are handling the delicate parts of the computer when removing and transporting them !sorry i have nothing else to offer you except you really need a pro to look at it now i think..

[LiTos456]

oh crap...i just have nothing to say...just oh crap..

[LiTos456]

wait, what if i try to rebuild it by putting a different motherboard in? Maybe that will work? I mean its definatly not the processor, hard drives video card or sound or ethernet card, lol, what else could it be? It all leads to the motheroard and ram, but how could ram have anything to do with hard drives, which leads to the motherboard totally! i have another MB with 3 ram slots and i have 3 64 MB ram chips which i could use temporary before I buy a 2 gig one or something, do you think this could be the solution, the way out?

[caperjack]

It all leads to the motheroard and ram, but how could ram have anything to do with hard drives, which leads to the motherboard totally!

you could try that ,but why not try taking one harddrive and putting it into the tower .taking the winxp cd and boot to it , and format hdd, and reload windows and all necessary drivers to run the computer .try a clean install of xp to see how it all works .
the CPU and Ram are the hart of a computer .take either away and computer is useless!

[LiTos456]

whoa whoa slow down. Can you explain kinda more detailed about your suggestion? And once again i think my monitor went down again, so i might need to use the 64 mb chips now?
And btw, can you give any tips on how to be more careful with Ram? I heard its sensitive which is why I killed it, i dont want to kill anymore.

[caperjack]

whoa whoa slow down. Can you explain kinda more detailed about your suggestion? And once again i think my monitor went down again, so i might need to use the 64 mb chips now?
And btw, can you give any tips on how to be more careful with Ram? I heard its sensitive which is why I killed it, i dont want to kill anymore.

you are suppose to carry it in a static free bag .anyway you may not have killed you ram ,i handle it all the time out side of a static bag ,i really think you need to take to a pro .i can explain it all ,but you don't seem to under stand me !!
you say you had hardware issues in you first post ,what hardware issue was it !.
do you have more than one hard drive in the computer or ,just 1 drive ,partitioned to multiple drives .

[Scott Burry]

Hi Ed: If you were the one who reinstalled your ram it sounds like the ram is not seated properly or that youi inadvertenly cracked the mother board while reinstalling your old ram. I have no technical degree but loads of practicle experience. It soulds like either one of the above man. Neither ons is much fun to deal with but for sure if you have the wrong ram installed, it can reek havoc with your system. And if you have the correcrt ram installed improperly, you are also in for trouble. And (ouch) if you have cracked the mother board by pressing too hard on the ram, you are in the market for a new machine. Try reinatalling the original ram you had in there last when it was working properly. Also be sure to wipe off the gold fingers with a cotten ball and rubbing alcohol. Ground yourself out by touching the chassy before you do anything and don't shuffle your feet on the carpet. Good luck man.

[LiTos456]

Allright
Caperjack - I had a hardware failure where my HD crashed, motherboard was making constant beeps. I had 1 HD back then with 2 partitions. Thats when I bought a new HD and made 2 more partitions on it, one to be used for windows and some programs, the other for personal data, so I have 2 drives with 2 partitions on each. if you tell me normally what tower is then I might be able to read over your other post to understand your suggestion. Now you can tell me whatever it is you can tell me and I might understand it, if not i will research the terms and do my best to understand it. Dealing with this problem will yet again give me more experience with computers.

Scott Burry - thank you for your advices, Ill try all of it soon. Now one question about the contact between RAM and the Motherboard: Is it like different kinds of ram dont go for some motherboards and cause it to break and such? Because that would definatley be very..lets just stick with bad and confusing. now I have another board which i wanted to use to build a new comp but my first emergency is to fix this one. I could find any info i can on the both boards and tell you all that says on the ram chips and boards, maybe you can try to tell me if theres anything wrong between the boards and the rams. If the relationship between the board and the ram has to be specific, such as not all rams can go to all Motherboards then i would definatly need some advices to figure out what is right or wrong, not to screw up my comp by making it of components that dont go for each other.

Thanks =)

[caperjack]

tower = computers,metal outer case .
the ram issue is a very complicated one.search www.google.com for "different ram types " and see what you find

[Scott Burry]

What did you do other than take out the ram modules and eventuaslly put them back in one at a time until the system "started to" boot up? Think carefully. Very carefully

[LiTos456]

Well...I took one of them out, at first it didn't work then the other one out and the other one in and..it worked..thats all I did..

PS: The tower...arent they're all in the tower right now? And ok Il research on the different types of ram right now..

[LiTos456]

well what ive learned is that my ram is DDR...i cant seem to find my other 512 MB ram chip which i considered to be broken, and it probably is. The otherone was DDR and the other 2 128MB chips and..4 or 3 64 MB chips i have are most likely DDR too. Well what can I say? I just hope you guys point me into the right direction so I can fix this piece of metal. And I cant afford a pro to look at it, he's probably gonna charge me a lot of cash and...no. Thats why im here..
PS: I really dont mind spending enough time with you to discuss this and come to a solution, just so it gets fixed. Ill try to do whatever it takes to fix it..whatever is within my possibilities.

[caperjack]

PS: The tower...arent they're all in the tower right now? And ok Il research on the different types of ram right now..

yes ,but what im trying to tell you to do is this .get a hardrive
with nothing of interest on it ,install it in the tower as master by its self,and format and reload winxp on it to see if it works with the new video card and stuff.

[caperjack]

I cant afford a pro to look at it, he's probably gonna charge me a lot of cash and...no. Thats why im here..

LOL ,when you blow the thing up you will be handing out much more cash for a new computer ,the old saying ,pay me now or pay me later applies here .

[LiTos456]

hah you're pretty much right but not yet.

As for the hard drives... Well Im gnna need to get one first, but before i even do that i have to get my monitor to work again.

Also its just weird how the BIOS cant detect the drives..And why does it keep on saying "The BIOS is not installed" when I can normally use it and stuff?

[caperjack]

you just don't get it do you ,im pretty sure your monitor works, its you install of winxp that not working ,you computer is not computing,not sending video signal to the monitor .im all most 100% sure you need to reload winxp ,if not im really missing something !!

[LiTos456]

I know my monitor is working, but how am I supposed to reload windows XP if I can't see anything?! I'm confused about the whole RAM thing thats what.

[LiTos456]

okay well the problem is that I dont have a harddrive i can spare..so yeah thats kinda bad. Ill see what i can do.

[LiTos456]

Allright guys great news and progress. Scott Burry - THANK YOU VERY MUCH for the alcohol tip. I have done that to all my RAM chips and my 512 chips are back and working well, 1 gig, wohoo! Now the onl'y problem that stands before us is detecting the hard drives.

Caperjack - I don't think I have a good hard drive I can spare. On my old drive I have all my personal data from a few weeks ago, which means that whatever I've added will since the hard drive crash will be lost if I use my new Hard Drive. But If I use my old one my sister's data will be lost because I think she never copied it to the new one. What choices do I have? I guess the new Hard Drive but first I have to find out if that's the only way out.
First off, how is it supposed to install windows on a hard drive that it can't detect, which means "it doesn't have".
Second off - what are the possible reasons for hard drives being not detected. All jumpers are set right. I tried making the new one the only one on the cable, nope didn't work. So what might be the reasons?

I'm starting to get a feeling we're getting close to the end of this.

[caperjack]

first ,how do you know the hdd is whats not being detected ,do you get any error messages on the screen [no] nothing on the screen, then its likely a video card problem ,do you have a sound card ,network card ,modem ,or any other pci card install if yes remove them ,un-plug cdrom's and just hook up the harddrive ,and video ,If i remember correctly you motherboard dose not have onboard video ,so try one card and then the other .
if its not recognizing the hdd then it could be dead ,but i drought it !!
make sure the ide ribbon cable is install correctly and tight .

[LiTos456]

it tells me "No IDE Drives found!" then when I go to Setup (BIOS?) It says first master or something [Not detected] or something like that, and etc. They cant be dead for no reason like that. MY ram wasnt dead, it cant just die out like that.

[caperjack]

yes they can ,bad ribbon cable or not hooked up right ,or something like that .

[LiTos456]

okay what can i do right now?

[caperjack]

okay what can i do right now?

take it to someone who can help you with you problem.

[LiTos456]

uh huh yeah thanks thats helpful. I guess ill just go ask on some other forums then.

[caperjack]

uh huh yeah thanks thats helpful. I guess ill just go ask on some other forums then.

im sorry to hear that ,but im having a hard time helping someone who know little or nutthing about computer let alone trying to do what you are trying to fix,you really need to do a search for "how to basic computer" and do a few weeks of reading ,learning .then search intemetiate computing! and so and so on!!!!! I suggested you may have a bad ribbon cable and you then want to know what to do ! obvious thing would be to get another ribbon cable and try that .bye bye , .oh by the way i am doing this for FREE.

[LiTos456]

look you guys have been most helpful. in one day i went to 3 places. Got banned on one for no reason O.o, on the other one noone ever replied on the other but here i got lots of help. Now I know computers enough to understand how to fix them.
I'll see if I can find a different ribbon cable in my house right now and try it.

[LiTos456]

I am extremely happy to click on the link "Mark As Solved". I have messed around with the Ribbon Cable and guess what? I start seeing the names of my hard drives pop up all over while the computer boots. I was very happy.
Also I noticed that somehow my DVD drive was disconnected from the cable O.o No wonder it didn't display it