Computer hardware problem: is it video card or hard drive?

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Josh1billion
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Computer hardware problem: is it video card or hard drive?

Post by Josh1billion »

My desktop PC has not been functional for around two months now. In this time, I've been using my laptop. I think I need to replace either the video card or the hard drive (there are two hard drives installed, and the primary one would sometimes fail.. more details below). I'm 80% sure it's the video card, but I don't have a spare AGP card to throw in, so I can't be sure. I'm wondering if it's possible for it to be the hard drive's fault, as that was also having problems shortly before it stopped functioning (more details below).

The history: (you can skip to "The current state" because this section may or may not be relevant)

One day in July, I smelled plastic burning from somewhere inside the case.. and after having it on for a number of minutes later, it crashed. I determined that it was the power supply, and I'm positive that was it (because the power supply had a very strong smell of burning plastic coming from it). So to this point, no problems with a hard drive or video card. I replaced the power supply and all was well.. to this day, the inside of the case still smells faintly like burned plastic, but I'm 99.9% sure that the smell is just remnants of the old power supply.

It must have been about a month later that my hard drive started having problems. I have two hard drives installed (one for Windows and one for Fedora Core Linux, dual-boot with Grub boot loader). Problem was that sometimes (usually) when I would try to boot up the PC, it would say "Primary master drive failed" or something like that.. I think that's the exact message actually.. So I backed up all of my important files and continued as usual, planning to replace the hard drive within a few weeks.

The current state:

Not too long after that message started appearing (I'd say one to three weeks later), it turned into the state it's in now. I can plug it in and turn it on, and all the fans will come on inside (including the video card's fan), but no video output appears on-screen. IIRC, the monitor just says "No signal detected" and then goes black.

Does this sound like something that's for sure a video card problem (I'm 80% sure it is), or would it be possible that it's caused by the faulty hard drive which (coincidentally?) started failing soon before it went into its current state of functionality?

EDIT, Important:
I just got a good idea and tried this: I plugged it in again and hooked up the speakers to it 'cause it used to always have a voice saying "Startup successful, computer now booting from operating system" or something like that, so I went to see what it would say and it said "System failed - CPU's hot" .. sounded like that anyway. I felt the heatsink and fan and they weren't hot at all, just normal room temperature.
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Benjamin
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Post by Benjamin »

What is the computer manufacturer and model number? If you built this yourself what is the motherboard and bios version?

It sounds like something is seriously wrong with your system. If your not getting any beeps during POST the BIOS isn't sensing that anything is wrong. If you have audio, but no video, it could very well be the video card, but I doubt it. I don't think it's the hard drive either since you claim to still have audio. Sounds to me like you need a new motherboard.
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Josh1billion
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Post by Josh1billion »

astions wrote:What is the computer manufacturer and model number? If you built this yourself what is the motherboard and bios version?
No model number, I bought it in January from a guy who built it and (eventually) sold it used to me.

I googled "system failed, cpu's hot" and it sounds like it's the CPU and/or the motherboard.. hm..?
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Maugrim_The_Reaper
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Post by Maugrim_The_Reaper »

Check the PSU cable into the Motherboard. I had a PC recently where the PSU plug for the Motherboard was overheating. Pulling it out, and pushing it back in got the PC started again. The problem reduced after installed an extra case fan - but I suspect it was still overheating a little. It used to let the PC start, but the BIOS never booted.

IMO, if your video card has a spinning fan then it's unlikely to be the cause - it's on an AGP slot anyway. You can check for Hard Drive activity to check if the BIOS is loading up the boot sector. So I'd say it could be bad news for either the Hard Drive or the motherboard. If you take out the HDD, you should still get to the BIOS regardless, so I'm betting on the Motherboard.

Try plugging out all cables, and only reattaching the essentials - then test. If you recently installed new hardware components (e.g. a PCI card) remove it completely before a re-test.

If nothing works still, you can either take it for a service (I never can since I break the warranties on Day 1 ;)) or check out the CPU heatsink. Maybe it's not connecting to the CPU cover properly (not conducting heat away). You can get heat conducting paste (someone give me the right name here - blank spot right now!) to make a better connection between the CPU and heatsink, and see if that helps.
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Josh1billion
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Post by Josh1billion »

Hmm.. yup, sounds like it's the motherboard. :?
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