Try to boot directly into BIOS. This could be an F10 or other key, and depends on the motherboard or manufacturer. Check the date and what disk the BIOS will try to boot from. You should be able to boot up with just a display, keyboard and mouse. Plug and play started in 1995.

On Fri, 19 Jan 2024 at 16:16, Peter King via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:

I had a Lenovo Legion T5 that went very bad on me (short story: do not buy this computer!), and while getting a replacement case/motherboard/CPU all set up, hauled out an older computer with which to get work done while the replacement gets up to speed.  Well, now this older machine is acting up.  For a while it would not boot unless mouse, keyboard, and monitor were all attached.  It runs an AMIbios from 2009, and a bit of googling showed that back in the day that did happen as a "feature" of consumer computers (rather than servers).  So each time I needed to reboot I just plugged in all that stuff, rebooted, and then unplugged it all again, and the old computer ran just fine.  That worked around a dozen times.

Today I set out to reboot the old computer to get some work done, plugged everything in, and ... nothing.  Never even got to the BIOS screen.  No luck with multiple attempts.  Changed the HDMI cable, still nothing.  Took off the side panel and saw that when I turn on the power to the system, the CPU fan and the case fans come on, but it doesn't look like anything else does.

It could be the graphics card, or the power supply, or the CMOS battery, or something else.

Any suggestions for what to try next?

-- 
Peter King			 	peter.king@utoronto.ca
Department of Philosophy
170 St. George Street #521
The University of Toronto		   (416)-946-3170 ofc
Toronto, ON  M5R 2M8
       CANADA

http://individual.utoronto.ca/pking/

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