Need help - PC outputs nothing to screen with either onboard or discreet GPU

[LukeTim]

Okay, so a couple of months ago, I packed my PC up to go into storage before moving house. During which, I opened it up to get rid of some dust since it had been a while since I last did so.

At one point, I dropped a screw inside, and it even went underneath the motherboard... afterwhich I realized I had left the PSU on! I switched it off, and used a paper towel to clean dust off the CPU heatsink... and maybe a little off the PCB.

Now, after 2 months in storage, I have reconnected my PC and I am getting no video output. I have tried both GPU outputs, I have tried the motherboard output with the discreet GPU plugged in and with the discreet GPU taken out. I can hear the HDD being accessed, so I know that at least some of the Motherboard and the CPU must be working.

Has anyone heard of a similar problem? Does anyone have an idea what it might be? I think it's something on the motherboard, but I'm not sure.

Specs:

CPU: Q6600 @ 2.40GHz

Mobo: Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R|

RAM: 4GB Crucial 667MHz DDR2|

GPU: Powercolor Radeon HD4850

PSU: Corsair TX650W

[sal_vager]

I had this happen to me on two different occasions, in both the culprit was one of the RAM sticks that had shaken loose, the HDD was accessed by the BIOS but there was no CPU activity, so no signal sent to the GFX card and no signal to the monitor.

You may not have a loose memory stick, but one might have gone bad.

[LukeTim]

Thanks, I'll try with each stick individually.

[LukeTim]

SORTED. THANKS SO MUCH!

Now I'm going to buy some new RAM, and an SSD to stick Windows 8 on. (I recently got Windows 8 Pro 64-bit from Microsoft Dreamspark Premium, which used to be MSDNaa).

So excited to have my PC back.