My PC has degraded to the point where it won't even power up. I press the power button; a couple of LEDs flash on the case accompanied by 1 second of a revving up sound, and then silence. Any suggestions on how to get this machine to power up? Even if I can't get this computer back up and running, I'd like to at least retrieve files from the hard drive (docs, pix, music). I welcome your suggestions on this as well.
Thx,
Jeff
My best advice is take the hard drive out, and add it to a working system (as a slave if ide) to retrieve your files, it is the safest way IMHO at this stage, the main reasons for the current situation are either the PSU is bad,or going bad, and worst case it can take the rest of the system with it, easiest way to check is with a PSU tester.
Or it could be heat, if the CPU has been used for a long time, it's possible the thermal compound has degraded to a point where it is no longer keeping the CPU cool, if this is the case simply reseating the CPU with new thermal compound should resolve that.
This doesn't mean it can't be anything else, but these are often the causes of such symptoms, hope this gets you started at least.
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