I just brought my desktop out of storage and set it up at my apartment, and when I turn it on it seems to start up okay and stay running but there is no signal to the monitor. I looked inside and it doesn't appear that the fan on my graphics card is spinning, either...is my graphics card shot or is there something else that could be wrong? I am not going to buy a new one so if it's shot, I kinda have to put everything back in storage...don't really want to do that.

Either your cable is bad, your graphics card is bad, or your monitor is bad.

I hooked the laptop up to the monitor and cable, it works fine. I just switched the power cable thing to the card to a different one....i have video to the monitor now but i can't see the fan on the card itself spinning. all the other fans are working, though.

Edit: as if that weren't bad enough, while starting up it tells me there was a disk read error.

Edit again: and now it's back to no signal. What the hell.

A shot in the dark, but usually when my hardware starts acting up like that, I try swapping the power supply first. It's worked plenty of times for me. Other then that, try unplugging/unattaching everything, giving them a good air bath, and then reassembling your PC.

Just some thoughts, hope it helps.

I think you're right, I think it just needs to be cleaned as far as the fan goes...I let the computer sit for a while to cool off, took apart the fan/heatsink assembly, brushed it out a bit (no canned air right now) and put it all back together...turned it on and the fan is barely spinning but it's spinning. Struggling a bit..I think I need to clean and oil it and it'll be fine. It's still giving me that hard drive error though.

Make sure you use electronics oil.

But it's probably this:

Ew, what is that?

Those lines cut into the tops of the capacitors are vents. They're designed to prevent the capacitor from exploding if the capacitor becomes superheated or begins to off-gas.

Let me tell you a story:

Once upon a time there was a Japanese company called Rubycon that manufactured electrolytes for use in electrolytic capacitors, such as the filter capacitors used on motherboards. Because that's what Japanese companies do.
A Chinese company stole the formula for the electrolyte and sold it to a number of Taiwanese companies, because that's what Chinese companies do.
Those Taiwanese companies used it to manufacture extremely cheap capacitors, because that's what Taiwanese companies do.
Then publicly-traded multinational corporations bought these extremely cheap capacitors and used them in a wide range of products with absolutely no regard to quality, because that's what publicly-traded multinational corporations do.

Unfortunately for us (but fortunately for Rubycon), the formula stolen by the Chinese was incomplete. When the defective capacitor is used it generates hydrogen gas, which pressurizes the inside of the capacitor. The pressure pushes open the vent on the top and squeezes out the electrolyte. Basically every motherboard manufactured between 2002 and 2005 had at least some defective capacitors. Some companies are even still using them in order to clear out old stock.

So check your motherboard. Look for capacitor plaque, look for bulging capacitors (the vent should be flat on top). Look around the bases of the capacitors to see if they blew out that way. I've lost 3 motherboards to failed capacitors (all ASUS) and the symptoms were identical to yours.

I was talking to CaveDemon.


No, really though, that's crazy, I had never heard of that. I will check through all the capacitors on the board after my classes are done today. I'm thinking the monitor issue is simply my graphics card overheating, the heatsink is loose and the thermal paste is basically gone, and the fan doesn't spin very well. So I should be able to fix that fairly cheaply. I sure hope none of the capacitors blew or I'm out one very nice desktop computer for a long while...

aw, never watched CSI?

The real test is whether or not you get a BIOS beep code on startup. Does it beep once? Do you get a different pattern of beeps if you remove the video card entirely? (Should be something like one long and three short for no video, depending on your specific motherboard and BIOS).

Unfortunately the power supply has little to do with the motherboard itself. The power supply, LEDs and case fans can still turn on even if everything else in the computer is molten slag at the bottom of your case.

Lmao @ Horatio. That gave me a pretty heft IRL laugh.

Well, the capacitors all look fine. I cleaned up the fan and it's running much better now, though I still need to get back in there and oil it. The video card is working fine now other than that. Now I just have to deal with the hard drive problem and what may be bad memory (though that isn't causing any problems that I can see)

Edit: nope, the memory is fine. Must have been seated wrong or something, I took it out and replaced it and it's fine now. Just the disk error.

Brilliant summary. I've replaced around 20 motherboards at work because of this problem, and we're still finding bad ones that weren't showing signs the last time we checked. It's getting hard to find motherboards that support older CPUs, though.

The best part is the motherboard companies saying "Oh, it's not our problem".

I am still replacing at least 2 motherboards here a week due to crusty cap syndrome.