Please help me with gaming pc

[90snostalga]

Hi community.  If you remember back in late February I ended up getting a Dell Dimension 4100 computer thrift shopping that I ended up keeping as my vintage gaming computer.  It came with a 3dfx voodoo 3 video card and the games show great!  I installed a fresh install of Windows 98 on it when I got and did not have a problem.  The way it booted was:  As soon as you turn it on, the 3dfx voodoo 3 version and serial would show, then the bios screen, then windows 98.  Very fast. 

Well, yesterday since I finally had enough time to do so, I wanted to clean it inside and out.  I took the casing and all components completely apart.  I got every bit of dust off the casing and inside the pc, and all dirt.  It looks excellent now!  I even cleaned the fans and everything making sure no water or liquid got onto any parts.  So I put everything back together and now, the pc boots up but gets stuck on the 3dfx voodoo 3 version screen.  It will not get past this screen at all. No bios, windows, no error beeping sounds nothing.  Just shows me my video card details and never gets past it. I reset the bios and still no luck     All I was trying to do was make it feel better for being clean but I did not know it would destroy it  :'( 

Any help on what I may can do will be greatly appreciated in advance...Thanks for your time

[primalwrath]

Have you tried removing the videocard, then trying to boot? A faulty GPU can prevent a PC from booting and if it's freezing on the videocard diagnostic there's a good chance that's the case.

[badATchaos]

I would recommend the same. Troubleshoot the video card. See if you can boot to Windows without it Then plug the card back in and see what happens. If you have any compressed air use it to clean out your slots incase some grit fell down there.

[90snostalga]

the problem is the motherboard does not have onboard video. So when I plug it up what I hooking up the video card is pretty much does the same thing. You can here the hard drive but not sure how it would have just stopped working after I clean it. I must of damage to something When I cleaned it.

[fazerco]

Static electricity can ruin a part, and that happens when u clean a pc.

[primalwrath]

I'm not entirely sure what's gone wrong for you, but inadvertent damage during cleaning is unfortunately all too common. The only real advice I can give you is help preventing it happening in future.

First, buy an anti-static wrist strap. It'll stop static electricity frying the sensitive electronics while you're cleaning (I myself fell prey to this in my earlier system building days. Expensive GPU. Tears were shed).

Second, the safest method to clean components inside a system is to use compressed air to blow off the dust from a safe distance.

Hope this helps.

[pceslayer]

if its passing POST and getting to any video output I'd look into possible heat issues.

Also remove all PCI cards and disconnect your HDD/CDROM IDE cables. Only have the Voodoo3 in the machine and boot.

Might have funky IRQ issues if you put your PCI cards back in different slots. I do believe the AGP and one of the PCI slots share some address space so if you put certain soundcards in a certain slot(the PCI right under the AGP?) you could run into issues.

Also look for bent pins on your IDE connectors.