Pissed, bleeding, and frustrated.

Try pushing the RAM in a bit more until it 'clicks' the two tabs in. Also, put it back where it was originally, some mobo's are particular about where it goes, in order of biggest to smallest.

Sometimes you've got to push more than you'd think, but not too much! Also, while the RAMs out, see if the pins and slot on the bottom are identical, if not, you've got the wrong one. Also compare the stickers, but thats not always helpful.

Regarding the CD, I prefer a straightened paperclip, and push it straight into the small hole until the tray pops out, what Frigo said.

 

I tried the paper clip, it's just not working for me. I pushed the thing in as far as it would go, and the disk tray will not budge.
As far as the RAM goes, it's not "keyed in" for my ram slot. The slot is about 1/32 of an inch off of my original ram chip, and will not work. The next time I go out o buy ram, i'm just going to bring my original chip and show it to the clerk, saying "I want a new ram chip that matches this one."
It's not SD ram, it is DDR. Funny story, though. The sticker on the RAM chip says both DDR and SDRAM.
I'm going to return the bad ram chip, buy a completely new ram chip that matches my original (in everything but the memory size), and plug that in to see if my computer will boot. Like I said, my computer is acting like I haven't put any ram in, so either the original chip is broken, or the ram slot itself has been disconnected from the rest of the motherboard.

 

The official name of the DDR is DDR SDRAM.

Bring your computer to the shop, they'll probably help you.

 

Eh, the disk wont pop out? Never had that problem. Its the small pinhole, and you'll need to push it in maybe an inch, inch in a half straight in, until it stops, then Push. Its a manual catch and will pop out barring any physical damage to the drive itself.

Yep, you also got the wrong RAM, they make the notches different to keep us end-users from blowing stuff up and sueing them. (sneaky bastards!) Then, you've still got to 'force' the RAM into the slot until it makes a 'click' noise and the little tabs snap into place. It takes more force then the PCI card, but not too much more. I usually snap in one side at a time, or it might not go in at all.

When in doubt, just take your whole rack to the store and have them hook you up. Hopefully, they can fix it for a lot cheaper than buying a new one.

 

Yeah, I got the right RAM this time, and I bought a gig of it. No go.
THe motherboard has somehow been damaged through my constant adding and removing of RAM. As for the CD tray, I'm going to see what I can do, maybe push even harder into the little pinhole. Of course, my problem might be that I have no paperclips in my house. I'm using a small keyring that I straightened (using a source of heat and my trusty blacksmith's hammer).
Thanks for you help, guys. I know quite a bit about computers, but obviously not enough to repair a motherboard. I don't even know if that's worth the time and money spent to do so.
Well, I do have a lot of pins in my house...Maybe that's my CD tray's answer.

 

Fixing mobo's is easy. First, remove it from your case and place it gently on the ground. Second, put a pair of safety goggles on (safety first!). Finally, get your sledgehammer and begin smashing the mobo repeatedly, yelling obscenities at it and venting all your pent up aggresion on the evil 'Board of Money Eating'.

Problem fixed. :smash:

 

You know, I can't see why that wouldn't work, except that I have no sledgehammer, and I want my processor to remain intact. :lol:
However, I have done that exact same thing with SNES cartridges in the past. There was nothing wrong with the game, it just sucked so much noone would buy it. I'm speaking, of course, of Mickey's Magical Adventure (or whatever it's called).
What I can't figure out is how only a certain part of my motherboard is malfunctioning. I even removed the motherboard from my computer's case and inspected it. However, I can't see any cracks or anything in the surface. This really sucks. I want my computer back! I finally have the thing set up so I can play just about any game on the market, and I can't even turn the thing on!

 

I had a near invisible scratch on a mobo once, but it was enough to sever the connection that allowed mouse control. Everything else worked, so my cheap ass figured out how to move the pointer with the keypad and tab button for a few months.

Your last hope is that the tech support guys can fix it, it'll still be cheaper than buying a new rack.

 

Motherboards are like fridges, it costs twice as much to fix as it does to buy a new one. If your motherboard is 2 years old you can replace it very cheaply with a bottom of the range one that does everything a 2 year old motherboard can.

My computer started acting up a few months ago. I ended up buying a new hard drive as I was getting lots of disc errors. Turned out it was the motherboard all along. Somehow I didn't notice the weeping capacitors until I'd spent 3 days on the fecking thing. After some research I found an interesting story behind it. The formula for the capacitor gel had been stolen from a rival company by an inside man. However the inside man had been fed false information. The thief company then made millions of capacitors with the faulty gel and some of them ended up in my brand of motherboard.

I also managed to blow up an old hard drive while testing it out. I stupidly balanced it on the case and it slipped so that the case connected with the underside of the drive. I was rewarded with a cloud of purple smoke. Ooo, purple.

As for bleeding, I've done something very similar myself. The case was so sharp I didn't feel the cut and I wondered what all these dark smears were inside the case. Of course it turned out to be my blood.
Who ever thought being a geek could be so dangerous?

 

Do you happen to own a Hewlett Packard? I saw that my capacitors were also drooping*! However, I didn't think much of it, considering I had been fiddling with my computer for about two days beforehand, and probably forgot to "ground" myself at least once before playing with anything...
*by weeping, I'm guessing you mean doubled over. It could also mean that they were leaking...but most of mine were nearly at a 30 degree list from being perpendicular to the motherboard.

 

About the only thing I've, hopefully, really learnt while working inside my computer is that if the computer starts shouting out an everlasting loud tone, it is because the power isn't connected to the fan on the graphics card. Happened to me both when I put it together and recently when installing new hard drives.

 

Item 101 to keep an ear out for: If your hard drive starts making mechanical clicks like an old relay, you need to replace that drive like yesterday.

 

EDIT
I bought a new computer tower.
This thing came standard with a 200 gig hard drive and a 2 gigahert bus speed, along with a 256 MB GeForce. This one gets to stay.

 

bump
*Sorry guys, I'm just really excited.

 

Details?

 

Those are the details. The sexy, sexy details.
I think the only thing I would ever need to do would be to get more RAM. I don't need the videocard I bought anymore. That, and I haven't yet found a use for it.
The processor is an AMD Sempron, the videocard is an nVidia GeForce 6520 (or 6250...). It does EVERYTHING loads better than my old computer.
The new videocard I bought was a brand new ATi Radeon 9250 256 MB graphics card, which did things well, but I'm going to install UNreal Tournament 2004 to see how it handles on my new beast, and go from there.