Hiya Guys,

My desktop has died
When I try to boot it up (as apposed to out the window) I get the Asus screen come up then just a blank screen with a curser at the top and a $ sign about halfway down. Anyone got any idea what's gone tit's up? I'm thinking it's either the RAM or the Hard drive.

Money is an issue at the moment so can anyone suggest where I can get some CHEAP memory to get it running again?

The PC specs are as follows...

Asus A8V-VM SE motherboard.
AMD 64 dual core processor 2200
2GB DDR Ram
Deskstar (I think) SATA hard drive
Nforce graffix card.

A faulty Hard drive shouldnt stop the PC from booting, you will get a message saying drive not found but it will boot up to that point. Faulty memory will usually cause the PC to beep at you. Have you changed anything or installed any new programs of did the PC get shutdown incorrectly?

A $ with a flashing cursor sounds like a command line prompt in linux, you don't have a CD in the cd rom drive do you? if so take it out and see what happens on reboot.

[Edited on 7/3/2009 by Keith Weiland]

How many ram sticks are you running? chances are if its 2GB then you'll have 2x 1gb sticks.

Take one out and try it with just the 1 stick. If it still doesn't work then refit it and remove the other stick. If it still doesn't work then you know its not the ram. (unless both sticks have failed which is extreemly unlikely).

I have a spare 1gb (2x512mb) of DDR if you'd like to borrow it to try but I would need it back as I plan on using it in the near future.

Try starting it with all attached USB devices disconnected.
I have an ASUS (T2) which sometimes does similar - flashing cursor but without the $. When it happens I unplug all the USB devices and it will then start up ok. Plug them all back and it is fine until the next time it decides to do it.

Does it do a Graphics Card check sum before the cursor thingy?

Boot into BIOS if you can get that far and alter the display logo tag.

See if it completes the BIOS procedure... it sounds very much like a RAM problem.

Steve

Play.com is the cheapest for memory it comes to the uk via the channel Islands so takes about 8 days to arrive. Last time I looked it was 17 quid per 1gb stick of DDR400