Kevin: Hi, I'm Kevin and this is Randy. Randy: I am.
Kevin: And we're here to talk about when your computer won't start and when you can't get into
Windows. Maybe you have no lights turning on,
you can't hear anything,
maybe there's an error message. So we're here to hopefully help you find
where the problem is on your computer and how to fix it.
Randy: We will. We will do what we can.
Kevin: All right, so Randy, how would we get this computer started. It won't start right now. What
do we do?
Randy: Well first things first. You need to kind of understand how a computer boots up, right?
First it needs power.
It gets the power from the power outlet, brings it into the power supply.
Then it has to set up all of its insides, basically. The hard drive, the keyboard,
the video.
That's called BIOS or post. Once it gets past that
then it can load the operating system, usually from the hard drive, which we
usually know as Windows.
Okay so that's all the stages that it has to go through
before you can actually use the computer. So it helps to know.
Kevin: Okay so what you're saying is that it first has to pull power in,
then the power goes to all of the different components or
devices in here,
it recognizes it,
and then it can, after it knows everything, it has power, it can load the
software which then takes you to Windows. Randy: Then you can use it.
Okay, but anywhere along that chain of events, if any of those things
fail,
you know, depending on where it fails,
that kind of helps you troubleshoot that problem. Kevin: Okay so based on where it fails that
kind of points out here's your problem, if it's dying in that chain somewhere. Okay gotcha.
Okay so how do we get this thing running?
Randy: Well before you get this thing running,
before you start,
you wanna make sure that anything that isn't absolutely necessary is not
plugged into it.
You want to just have the keyboard, the mouse, and the monitor plugged in.
Things that you don't want to plugged in especially are like printers and USB storage devices.
Kevin: Oh, you mean like this one? Randy: Yes, because the computer will try to boot to that. It might
get confused. All right, well
what would you do to start it up?
Kevin: Obviously I'll just do what anyone does. I'll just push the power button. Randy: Okay now listen. What do you hear?
Kevin: I heard the power button come on and off.
Randy: Right, but you didn't hear any fans, right?
That tells us that it's probably not getting any power,
plus there's no light on the front,
so let's look at our cables. Our power cables. Kevin: Okay, so the power coming in, as we talked about.
Randy: Okay so there's your power supply. That's the thing that charges it up. So what you
want to do now is you want to check your cords because maybe you moved it and doesn't
start, so check to see if the dog was chewing on it,
or maybe it just became unplugged.
You want to try a different power outlet. Maybe the problem's with the power at the
power outlet.
You never know. Kevin: Yeah these are pretty easy cables to swap out to try a new one. They're pretty standard on
most desktop computers. Randy: Yeah you can try another cable. That's a very good
troubleshooting technique. So go ahead and plug it in there and see if we have power after we've
tried those things.
Okay, now we have a light that's come on.
That tells us that there is now power to the power supply. Kevin: Power outlet to the
cable to the computer is all good so far.
Randy: Yeah so the power supply is charged. Now it can charge the system when you press the
power button.
Kevin: All right, so do we want to try
turning it on again? Randy: Yeah before we do that though that TouchSmart over there,
that's a little bit different.
TouchSmarts and all-in-ones,
sometimes they have a power adapter, but same basic principal. Some of
them don't have the lights on there so you don't have the luxury of looking at that
light,
but same basic philosophy. Check your cable. Sometimes you have to replace a
cable or the power adapter itself.
Kevin: Which is a little harder I guess. This one here, that's a good thing about desktops
is that their plugs are pretty standard but with these you won't be able
to swap out a plug as easy.
Randy: Okay so let's go ahead and flip it around, press the power button, and then listen and see what you hear.
Randy: Listen for fan noises or beeps.
Kevin: Uh... that's probably not good.
Randy: Yeah beeping noises in general are not good. That's telling you that
the computer during that...
Now we're moving from power
to that post or BIOS area
where the computers trying to set up the components. Kevin: Right so the internal parts
are trying to get where it's recognized by the computer. Randy: Right, and now
it's saying it can't do that. It's having a problem with one of those devices.
One of the most common
is memory.
Memory is a common failure, processors, you know, your processor
might be bad,
or it may be clogged with
dust
and it overheated, things like that. So, but one good trick that you can do when you
get beeping noises
is to
swap the memory or
remove the memory module and reseat it. I know it sounds like it's complicated.
Kevin: So pulling the computer open an actually pulling out the memory chip and then pushing them back
in to make sure it's secure and in there.
Randy: Right. That's a trick that will get a lot of them, not all of them.
Kevin: Right, so if you do that and it's still beeping at you it's possible that the
memory is bad.
Okay, so I'm tired of this beeping so what do we do?
[laughs]
Randy: We have to do something about the beep.
Kevin: Okay it's off now. Randy: All right so disconnect the power cord, and we'll take side panel off.
Kevin: Don't want to electricute anything in there having it on.
Randy: Okay so to re-insert the memory DIMM
you undo this clip,
bottom one,
and there's one on the top that you can push on and
that kinda pops the DIMM out,
and to re-insert it you
push on the bottom
until it clicks, and then push on the top. Kevin: And you can hear it click when it's in place right there, right? That's locked in.
Randy: That's right. Now when you're in here messing around you want to handle the
DIMM on the edges only. You don't want to touch the surface.
You want to be careful of all the other sensitive components in here
because you can damage them.
You want to try and work over an area that doesn't have carpet,
and then also while you're in here you can
check some of these other things like the hard drive connectors and some of
these other connectors to make sure that they didn't come out because they also
might be the cause of why it's not booting, or why there's a beeping noise.
Kevin: So we just to make sure we're careful while we're in there, not to cause damage to anything else. Just connect it.
Randy: Okay so let's put the panel back on.
So when you're inside
and we're seeing that memory you want to make sure to keep your hands away from
other parts around the motherboard.
Also if you have a TouchSmart
or an all-in-one type of a computer,
a lot of those you can replace the memory.
Some you can, some you can't, but if you can there's usually a little cover that you have to remove
so you can perform that stuff on a lot of those. Kevin: Yeah and HP's website, you can go out and put in the model
number and you'll find information, documentation, that shows you
how to
take apart your PC
and put in the different parts.
Randy: Yeah, HP has a lot of helpful support
articles on part replacement.
Okay so now
let's plug the power back in and
turn it on.
The moment of truth. Kevin: Beeping sounds begone.
Okay blue light. That's already progress.
I hear fans,
and no beeping.
I hear things starting up. Randy: That's good,
but what's not good
is you don't have any video. Kevin: Yeah, it's still not going over to the monitor, so the monitor is still blank.
Randy: So now, we went to the power cycle, now we're in this whole BIOS/post thing.
So now you're going to have to troubleshoot a blank screen.
Kevin: So we have power coming in, it started up, sounds like the PC's running all fine.
Now it's the connection between here and here that we're worried about. Randy: It might be the connection
between here and here.
That's what we're gonna troubleshoot now is
the black screen.
So just like you trouble shot the power on the computer,
now we're going to troubleshoot the power for the monitor.
Now this doesn't really apply to a TouchSmart because it has a built-in display.
If the TouchSmart has power,
but the monitor's blank there's really not much you can do except for maybe service it.
But for this,
well what would you do here first?
Kevin: Well I'd probably turn on the power here.
There we go.
Randy: Look at there
Now you have power for the monitor. What does it do?
Check video cables. Kevin: So it's telling us that there's something with the cable or
connection not working.
Randy: So black screens are actually fairly common,
when it comes to boot issues like if your monitor goes out.
So you still need to do the same thing like you do with the PC.
You have to check the power and the cord. Now you got the video cable, so now you check
your video cable.
So you have to connections, one on the back of your computer, one on the back of your monitor.
So why don't you check that one, I'll check and make sure that this is all plugged in.
Okay any change?
Kevin: Still nothing.
Randy: So at this point what's really useful in troubleshooting
a blank screen scenario
is to swap the monitor. It's really useful. A lot of people don't have an extra monitor
lying around, but if you have a friend that has one... Kevin: I have one.
Old Reliable.
I keep this thing around all the time because it never fails.
It's probably like the first monitor I ever had. Randy: Why don't you go get that one. I will disconnect this one, and then
we'll hook that one up to the computer, and that will help tell us whether or not
the problem is with the monitor
or if it's with the computer, like the video system in the computer.
Kevin: Okay so the video component itself might not be working too, and this'll let us know if it's the monitor.
Okay, I'll grab the monitor. Randy: I will get this one out of the way.
Kevin: All right, so we got old reliable setup here, and this is going to tell us for sure.
You can always count on Old Reliable. So we'll know if the monitor is the problem.
Give it a shot? Should we start it up and see?
Randy: Yep. Turn that one on. Turn the computer on.
And let's see what happens.
Kevin: Blue light. Fan's coming on.
I hear the things starting up.
We have video. Randy: Ah, did you see that? You're initial startup screen came up.
Kevin: Oh wait a miunute.
Randy: Yeah, now it looks like we have an error. So this is another no start
scenario.
Kevin: Yep, it says "No boot disk has been detected." Randy: Right, but before we get into that, what does
this tell you now that you have video on this one?
Kevin: Well we know from the different
three steps that you talked about, power's coming in, we have power in here, the
components are there, it sent a video signal
so now we have over here that the monitor's working, so that means the last time with that
other monitor, there was a problem with that other monitor. Randy: Right, it tells you this is now
able to send video so the other monitor
was
not good. Something was going on with that other monitor.
But now Old Reliable's got an error message on here.
So with an error message what you can do is you can take that exact error
message, in this case you have "ERROR: No boot disk has been detected or the
disk has failed."
You can take that error, you can use that exact text on the internet or
HP's website to look for more information. Kevin: All right, so just write it down
exactly and search on that. Randy: Okay, I want to talk just a little bit about errors.
There's kind of three different categories, right? There's errors
involving hard drives,
there's errors and certain conditions that indicate the file structure
has been damaged,
and then there's also just lock ups where it hangs during the boot process
when it's loading Windows. Kevin: It's like it gets stuck on a screen and never goes anywhere else or something
Randy: So in this case, no boot disk,
it has the word disk in it, okay?
There's biohd errors,
there's this one, no boot disk, there's OS not found.
All of those can indicate that the hard drive is missing or not detected.
Kevin: System disk. I've heard of that one as well. Randy: All of those things that have
disk in it or hd is
saying that when this thing's going through this BIOS sequence, this post
and it's trying to configure the devices it can't configure the hard drive,
and that's kind of different troubleshooting
because
it's not going to be able to load the operating system because it can't even
detect the disk or there's some problem there. Kevin: So the key here though, the error's kind of giving us an
indication of where the problem might be occuring. So it's telling us here it's
something with the hard drive so
we would probably go to the hard drive and check and make sure the cables there
again are set, that maybe the power's all there, and things like that. Randy: Yeah, make sure of course you can
check the cables on the hard drive kinda like what we did earlier with the
memory. There was the hard drive there. You can check the cables. Unplug them, plug
them back in.
Kevin: Maybe some electricity built up maybe that's causing something.
Randy: Indeed. You might get lucky oftentimes, you know,
especially with a smart drive error... Kevin: You're saying if it says smart hard drive on the error?
Randy: If you see smart hard drive on there that's telling you that your hard drive is failing, so
if you can back up your data as soon as possible,
but you're going to probably replace the hard drive. Kevin: Okay.
Randy: The next set of errors are those that involve any sort of file
like if it says
"something".dll or "something".sys is missing or corrupt,
or you see everything's black except you just see a little blinking cursor on the
upper left where
all you see is that blinking cursor,
that's telling you that the file structure, something on there, is bad.
You might be able to boot in,
press F8 to come to a menu, a Microsoft menu. If you're lucky
to have that come up
then you can do a Microsoft System Restore to go back.
If that doesn't work,
then you can do a full on HP Recovery,
like a system recovery,
which you might end up losing a lot of your data and stuff but you at least get to
save your computer. Kevin: So it makes the software work again. So what you're saying is in this
kind of scenario, it's possibly the hardware, maybe software
but if you have something messaging the type of file of some kind
that's indicating a software issue.
And if you have that you can try to restore it if you can get to that point. Randy: Yes, a hard drive error, you're probably going to have
to replace the hard drive or there's more a serious thing. If there's a file error
then
you're likely going to be able to recover that using an HP Recovery like
in the event there's some nasty viruses, for example, that go in there and destroy system files,
an HP system recovery will get you back up and running again.
Kevin: I've even heard of the Startup repair thing coming up because people say mine says
starup repair continuing or checking or something. Randy: If you're lucky enough to have that
happen it might just automatically recover from itself. Kevin: So it'll run through. Just let
it run, and then it comes up.
I've actually seen it at home as well, and then it'll run a system restore on it's own if it can.
Randy: Just let it run. Whenever it comes up and prompts you to do something,
do it. Press the spacebar or whatever and then hopefully Windows will load, and if that doesn't
happen
then you might have to do a Microsoft System Restore,
or an HP Recovery. Kevin: If you have recovery disks, if your hard drive doesn't work, you can use disks
and start from there. Randy: Okay so let's talk about the the third one which is the one that's
not the most fun and that's the lockups.
So if your PC is starting up and it's going through and configuring it might
even get to the point where it's loading Windows. It'll say Windows 7
or whatever on the screen,
but then it locks up.
Kevin: It never gets into Windows. Randy: Right, it may lock up on the HP logo screen, it may lock up at a
black screen, it may lock up you know on the Windows logo.
If it locks up anywhere in that cycle,
you might have heat related problems. Kevin: So that's why you hear the fan a lot
of times with that. Fans will kick on really loud when that kind of thing happens.
Randy: Yeah, oftentimes the fans are having to work harder to try to remove the heat
and inside it just kind of locks up. It can't get anywhere.
So unfortunately, you know,
about the only thing you can do is use canned air
like this one,
and that you can blow around the vents like on the power supply, you can remove the case,
the side there, and blow around wherever you see cooling fins and fans
to get all that dust that's accumulated outta there.
And here on a TouchSmart it's a little bit different. Kevin: So it'd be like across the top
where you see the fans there and down across the bottom because the air comes in and
tries to flow through and push the heat and all that so you want to clear the intake and the outtake of the air.
Randy: And that might,
might get you back up and running. Hopefully get you back up and running
enough so that you can run some HP hardware diagnostic tests, there's HP Support
Assistant that comes with your computer.
You can run those tests to try to figure out
what component's failing.
But it can be difficult, and luckily there's some helpful articles on our website.
Kevin: Right, so if you go to hp.com, the same as with any of these
errors that we talked about, again, if you're seeing an error, if you've got it to your PC
know you've taken care of all the hardware like you talked about earlier,
and you get an image on your screen, that starts to tell you that you have a
component failure,
or you have a software failure. In either case go to hp.com/support
and search on these errors. Whatever that condition is. Take as much detail as you
can about what's happening and you're likely to find a document that's going to
answer your question, tell you how to fix it, or at least
if you can't fix it will help you know which part failed, like maybe you got a bad
hard drive you need to swap. Put in a new hard drive and then you're back to running
really well.
If you don't find it on HP's site, try your favorite search engine. You're likely
find something in a forum or somewhere else but most
errors and error conditions, someone has dealt with and fixed or can help point it out.
That's the main point.
So that kind of covers it all. We went through talking about
the power coming into the PC, what it takes to boot up and start up to get
into Windows. It has to get all of your components working, send a video signal over,
and then load the software files. And a problem can occur anywhere in there.
So hopefully we've shown you how you can test
to find out where the error that you're having occurs, and then you can find the
solution based on what that is, by either searching hp.com or trying some of what we talked
about already.
Randy: Yep, you should be well armed to at least isolate it down to where the problem is occuring. Kevin: Thanks. Talk to you next time.