Slimeline HP desktop - no video

[Appleby]

Not sure exactly what is going on here so I thought I'd throw this out for y'alls thoughts.

I was out at a customer's house a couple weeks ago helping her with some basic Outlook problems. Her HP Slimline desktop was running just fine. She calls me today and says that her screen won't come on. I go out thinking she's got a loose VGA cable or a bad video card. Cables are all tight, so I hook my laptop to her monitor and it works just fine. Must be a dead video card. I put a new slimline video card in, turn it on, same thing. No video at all. I bring it back to the office and I'm still stumped. I've unplugged the HDD and tried to boot, just to see what would happen, nothing. Monitor is asleep and doesn't see anything plugged into it. I pop out each stick of RAM one at at time, nothing. The computer turns on fine, all fans running, no beeps whatsoever but I noticed that it doesn't seem like I can turn the computer off by pressing the power button, not even holding it in. I'm beginning to wonder if it's a bad PSU. The problem is, it has a non-standard power connecter so non of my PSUs on the shelf will even let me test it. Granted, I'd need this specific slimline PSU to make the full repair, but I'd like to test that theory to see.

I'm kind of at a loss. She told me she'd rather buy a new computer, than spend much on this so I don't want to dump a ton more time into it. I've already got 1 hour onsite plus 30 mins in the office. If I find it's a PSU and that is going to be another $75+ (just guessing) for this HP slimline PSU plus the time of ordering and waiting for it to arrive, I think she is going to opt to dump the machine.

Just curious if there is anything else I can try. Like I said it sounds like it's running ok, but I'm not sure that its doing anything more than spinning the fans. I would think if it was a video card problem, I should be able to press the power button once and the machine would go through the normal shutdown cycle, if it was sitting at the Windows password screen or at the desktop. I can't remember if she has a password on the acct or not.

Thoughts?

 

[Styxbound]

As a very rough, seat-of-the-pants thing I tend to feel when the board doesn't have control it's probably bad. But I'd look up the proper bios clearing procedure and try that before throwing in the towel. I'm guessing you've tried unplugging all non-essentials.

 

[Appleby]

Thanks for the help. I'm def. leaning towards the board or the PSU. Both of which are difficult to test on this little slimline unit without ordering parts and spending money that she's not going to want to spend.

Yep, I pulled RAM, DVD drive and the HDD which is about all there is in the little case. I'll give her the news tomorrow and let her decide how to proceed.

 

[iladelf]

That's my biggest issue with the Slimlines; sure, they're cheaper up front, but more expensive to fix when they break, ergo, most of the times a throwaway computer.

 

[ATTech]

Pull all power sources and discharge the capacitors by pressing and holding the power button for 30 seconds. You can also try removing the RAM and seeing if you get any beep codes. If not, it's likely a dead motherboard.

 

[14049752]

The HP slimlines with nvidia chips are known to have that issue. If you are able, you can reflow them. I one in my shop, running as a music server, that I reflowed a long while ago and it's still working fine.

 

[joydivision]

I had one of these before, resetting the CMOS sorted it, but I did advise it may only be a temporary fix. It really does sound like a motherboard issue, you can test the PSU a multimeter.

 

[thirsty.professor]

I've had the same issues with the slimlines, they may look nice and small but they can be very difficult to repair properly and unnecessarily expensive.

 

[OldSchoolPC]

I've had the same issues with the slimlines, they may look nice and small but they can be very difficult to repair properly and unnecessarily expensive.

<rant> I agree. I never understood why slim lines PCs suck so badly when standard size laptops do not, even though a laptop is way smaller. You pay $150+ for something that often times has a little less horsepower and takes up a little less space and has a life expectancy MUCH shorter. I always advise customers to get a standard size PC or Laptop</rant>

 

[Appleby]

Thanks guys. Nope, no beeps with or without the RAM, nothing. I'm convinced it's the board. Either way the customer said she didn't want to spend more than $100 fixing it, so that pretty much ruled out any of the possible repairs. She said to order her a new (slimline ) HP and bring it to her ASAP. So that's what I did and it should be here on Monday. Thanks for the help.

 

[Knightsman]

You can test the power supply with a multimeter.

However, after working on numerous numbers of these stupid slimlines, I bet its the motherboard.