Yeah, and I've never seen or heard of anything like it. Right now, I'm posting from a different computer. Here's what's happening:

* When I press the power button on the tower, the computer starts up, but the monitor remains blank (and off).
* Often, when I turn of the computer, it starts turning off and on over and over again by itself.
* When I press the "setting" button on the monitor (You know, the one that you use to change the brightness and stuff?), it says something about analog input. I think this has something to do with the fact that there are two jacks on the back of the monitor for communication with the tower, but only one of them may be used at a time.
* There was a VERY short brownout at the time another person was using the computer, and afterwards, the refresh rate of the monitor got set really low, evidently making the image on the monitor appearing to "ripple", at least according to the other person.
* Way before any of this, another person noticed the hard drive was making more noise than usual. (A telltale sign of a failing hard drive, evidently)
* Often, when turning on the computer, the fan on the video/3D card (An Nvidia) starts spinning reeaaalllyy fast. (Yes, I was surprised to find a fan on the video card too......)
* The computer in question is a Dell, with a tower with a considerably large fan. Ironically, when turning on the computer, THAT fan dosen't do much, and the vid card fan is a lot louder.

Does anyone know what's going on? Because I have NO idea. Is it possible that the hard drive failed, and the "brownout" messed up the computer at the same time? Maybe it's a virus?

I've once had the a problem with a black-screen on startup. That was because the harddrive had lost contact with the socket to to ware and tear.

Try to see if it's possible to beat it back into space..:?

Dunno if that's a help.

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What? The hard drive actually has a socket that helps with the monitor? Wow! That's interesting.

DUCK AND COVER!




hmm years back one of our computers went through that. Apparently it was un savable, and we had to buy a new one.
Best bet is maybe taking it into some experts or a computer mad friend to have a look at.

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It connects to the motherboard.Which then connects to the rest of the computer.

I'm not that techy with computer-parts. But that should really be obvious.

But yeah, not having a harddrive will effectively prevent the computer from starting at all - because there is no data (unless there is a bit in the BIOS)

But I think the brown-out part is your major worry. Refer to above post.

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Try removing the video card and plugging the monitor into the mobo's video out.

Same. My problem is that it logs off automatically when I try to log on (even in Safe Mode).
I'm fucked. >_>

Doesn't sound like a virus or anything software-related to me.

Okay, for starters, unplug your PC, open it up and check if there are any loose connections - it sounds silly, but one loose wire could easily cause all these problems. Take it a step further and unplug and replug everything you can, just to be sure everything is tight. While you're in there you might as well give it a clean, if you have an air-duster, that would be fab, otherwise you can tun a hair dryer on cold and blow the dust out that way - don't use cloths, they're staticey, and the hair-dryer trick works better anyways

Does your PC beep strangely at all when you turn it on?

Anyways, do that, and report back with any more findings!

Hunh... I think it could be the hard drive doing any of these things... but that could just be optimistic thinking, because that would be the easiest cause of the problem to fix. I'd just have to get a new hard drive and install Windows, and, uhhh.... redo all the work I haven't backed up......

I've opened the computer, and it's not even that dusty really. I think another person already dusted the thing while it was open, and that proved futile, unfortunately.

I think getting a new hard drive will probably be a good thing, because, on the 533 mhz, Windows 98 SE, $300 computer I'm posting on now, THE PAGES ARE LOADING FASTER!!! The two computers even share the same dial-up internet connection!! Aaaaaaahh!!! Either Mozilla is really slower than I thought it was, or that Visual Studio 2005 beta program messed the new one up seriously...



What!? How are you even posting? Going to different people's computers each day? The DS Browser?? At a computer lab???

You know, with that problem, you could probably use a boot disk or something to recover your files. Can't you reinstall Windows without wiping out the hard drive? Maybe you could use that boot disk Linux thing.... what's it called..... Knoppix or something? (They all sound the same...) Linux CAN read the Windows file system, I've heard.

Sounds like it could be the motherboard damaged in the brownout. ;_;

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That part about the video card fan happened to me. For some odd reason, it showed me the BIOS on the machine, but when Windows came up, it couldn't animate it. Turned out the video card broke down. I got a new computer because the one that broke down was slow, outdated, and really sucky.

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I'm using my alternative laptop. XD
I lack the Windows XP (my OS) installton CD so I'm trying to find other ways to sort this out.

we had a kind of similar problem, the fan got kind of dusty and couldn't cool down so the computer refused to start up. We just hoovered the dust out...

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This is extremely dangerous and may harm the computer... vacuum cleaners should not be used to clean computers. Most people would recommend you use canned air instead.

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Woohoo! Computer's back! Called Dell, a tech support guy came, and it turned out to just be the video card.

Feel free to lock this topic because..... it's kinda useless now.