[EggMan]

Hey all,

I left my computer to sit for five minutes and when I returned it had shut itself off. Ever since, whenever I turn my computer on, the light on the front glows to indicate the tower is on and working, but the monitor's light glows orange - as if it's in standby and not receiving any information from the computer. And nothing else happens thereafter.

I thought perhaps my hard drive may have kicked the bucket, but I was hoping to get some other opinions. I apologise if the information is limited, but it's all I have to go on; I have no idea why it would have crashed in the first place. I only had a my ISP's website displayed on the screen.

I'd appreciate any insight or suggestions,
Eggman.

[Mike0001]

I have seen this many times where the PC enters a standby mode that the monitor doesn't understand, so worth a try.

First, Press and hold down the power button for about 5 seconds whilst the PC is "on".

Next, try restarting it as normal and see if that works.

If not, try restarting in Safe Mode, which means press power but also hold down F8 until you get a screen with a set of choices. Then try Safe with Networking and see if it starts. (Screen will look a bit odd.) Then try restarting normally.

[EggMan]

Thanks for the suggestion, Mike.

It doesn't seem to have solved the problem, though. It seems a little strange that the PC would go into a standby mode after literally five minutes. I've also since turned the power off to both the monitor and the PC at the power point. Shouldn't this have brought the screen out of any sort of standby mode?

[mrdaveyk]

overheating perhaps? i dont know so much on the signs of overheating but maybe ya fans need a 'fairy liquiding'

im not of course suggesting you use fairy liquid, hah!

[EggMan]

Hi, mrdaveyk.

I don't think it would be overheating problems because the machine refuses to start up at all. I've had a couple of computers in the past that have experienced heating problems and in each case, the computer closed itself down upon exceeding safe temperatures and after a few minutes would start up fine (only to crash again shortly after if you didn't leave it long enough.)

[Mike0001]

You should at least get a POST screen. Is the monitor cable attached firmly? If the hard disk is spinning up you should hear it as a quiet whine increasing in pitch. Can you borrow a monitor from someone else to try? (Most LCD TVs are monitors these days.)

This happened to me once on my desktop and it turned out the monitor cable was duff.