Troubleshooting

This article is about how to troubleshoot your PC if problems do arise. Either during the build or just in general with a PC you already had working at home. If you're building a new PC, it can be frustrating when you've done things again and again but it still isn’t working. Here are just a few problems that might occur and some solution’s:

 PC won’t turn on at all!

First thing to check is to see that all the parts are configured correctly, evreythings in the correct slot in the motherboard. Also, try unplugging everything, especially the main 24-pin power cable, from the motherboard and plugging it back in. It's most likely your motherboard or power supply, or some connection in between.

PC starts fine, but nothing shows up on the monitor!

If everything else is working fine (startup tone and everything) it's probably just a problem with the graphics. make sure you have the cables from the monitor to the computer plugged in correctly, and that your monitor is set to receive signals from that type of cable. For example, if your monitor is set to receive from a DVI signal and you're using a VGA cable, the monitor won't display anything. The best thing to do is to leave your monitor on "auto-detect" setting if it has one. If not, you can just play around with the different inputs until one shows and image.

If this doesn’t work, it may be your motherboards chipset which is broken. Or if you have an external video card, it could be something wrong with that. It could also be the port on the motherboard in which your card plugs into. If this is the case, try changing the location where your cord is plugged in. If it's plugged into your video card, try directly plugging it into the port on your motherboard.