[Jrenter2]

My father-in-law brought me a computer from his work yesterday and told me that his boss said it won't fire up. I plugged it in and it won't do anything. I unplugged all the drives except the HD and still nothing. Is there anything I can do to test to see if it is the power supply that is bad or something on the motherboard? Do I need to take out all the cards and then plug it in and try it? It is not a brand name computer, so that don't help. I don't get much into the "hardware" side of things, so I need some help on troubleshooting this one. Any and all help would be greatly appreciated. I do have an extra power supply available to me from an HP if I need it. I don't if it is the same size or not...so I don't want to go down that road.

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The first thing to check is the power supply. Usually using a known good PS will tell you if thats it. The H-P power supply will work if it is a later model. Information is usually on a sticker on the PS as to wattage of the PS. Make sure it is close to what is in the computer. A 150 watt PS is marginal and a 120 watt PS will not power up a later model computer. One thing the early H-P PS's have is a connector that hooks to the motherboard that is a switch to tell the PS the MB is working. This is just for H-P computers so you need to jumper this switch for the PS to work.

To tell if you have power to the motherboard and the MB is trying to work is to look to see if any fans start running, like the CPU fan. If fans are running you can check the memory and video to see if they are working. I usually replace the parts with known good parts. Beyond that it is either the MB or the processor that has died when nothing happens at all.

SRX660

[SRX660]

The first thing to check is the power supply. Usually using a known good PS will tell you if thats it. The H-P power supply will work if it is a later model. Information is usually on a sticker on the PS as to wattage of the PS. Make sure it is close to what is in the computer. A 150 watt PS is marginal and a 120 watt PS will not power up a later model computer. One thing the early H-P PS's have is a connector that hooks to the motherboard that is a switch to tell the PS the MB is working. This is just for H-P computers so you need to jumper this switch for the PS to work.

To tell if you have power to the motherboard and the MB is trying to work is to look to see if any fans start running, like the CPU fan. If fans are running you can check the memory and video to see if they are working. I usually replace the parts with known good parts. Beyond that it is either the MB or the processor that has died when nothing happens at all.

SRX660

[Jrenter2]

With all the cards in and all the drives except the HD unplugged....nothing happens...the fan won't fire up or anything....so I wasn't sure if taking out the cards would help or not in deciding that or if that doesn't matter.

[Jrenter2]

Ok, well, I ended up putting in a new power supply. I turn the button on, and now the HD won't fire up..and the light is blinking on 1 CD Rom drive and the light is stready on the other CD Rom drive and I cannot open the doors on either.

Any ideas? The PS is the exact same as the one that came out. Don't understand why the HD won't power up.

Really could use some help on this one.

[Longhorns242]

well i dont know how many watts u have in ur PSU but i would recommend getting at least a 300 watt PSU.

[negative_silent]

Hi Jrenter2.

You said, 'the HD won't fire up' so does that mean that your computer can not detect it in BIOS or does it say any errors?

[Jrenter2]

I'm sorry, I didn't clarify that... Once I connected the HD, the power lights on the front came on, but when you actually felt the HD, it wasn't running and the the CD Rom Drives lights were blinking. Even if I disconnected everything, except the HD, it didn't "feel" like it had any power goig to it. No BEEPS or anything was to be heard either.

I then made that HD a Slave in my other system and it did the same thing. I feel that this power spike took out this HD as well.

[silverbeard]

With no post I suspect there is more wrong then the hard drive. I have several systems that boot form various media and two that don't have hard drives I boot from cd or usb. The point is that a hard drive is not needed. No post is a sign of bigger problems.

[Jrenter2]

I agree Silverbeard...this system has big problems...and I told them that.

What really had me worried was the fact that I took their HD out of that bad system..and put it in a good system...and it still had no physical power up on it. In the good system, I had made it the master and then a slave...it wouldn't do anything...as I suspected with no power firing it up.