Troubleshoot: Powers up then quickly down before boot

[FSDTech]

I have a PC that begins to power up then quickly powers down. It never gets to the BIOS boot process. My thoughts have been that something was not plugged into the motherboard correctly, or that maybe the CPU or RAM has gone south. As best as I can check, it appears all cables are plugged in properly. Thus due to the process never getting to the OS boot I figured it was some hardware issue. Any thoughts would be helpful

[Jiggy]

Hi FSDTech Welcome to PC Guide.

1. Are the fans on the power supply and cpu spinning ?
2. Make sure all memory sticks, PCI cards, AGP are firmly seated.

Does it boot ?

If not try a barebones boot only using the heatsink + cpu, one stick of memory, graphic card.

Does it boot ?

If not the problem is one of those parts or power supply.
If it does, add back your other parts one at a time rebooting after each part.

Does it boot ?

[FSDTech]

Thanks for the help! After tracking down the parts to test with I determined that it was the CPU. And I was able to find an inexpensive replacement online.