[dolface755]

My computer shut down on it's own recently and for some reason will not boot back up again. I have taken another hard drive and tried booting it and still nothing happens. I have also taken out the video card and replaced it with another and I am still not getting anything. The power supply is working, I can hear the hard drive working but I am not getting any screen or beeps. I put my hard drive into another computer and it only boots to the "Windows was not shut down properly, how would you like to boot options" then when I click safe mode the computer reboots to same screen. This happens repeatedly. I'm not sure if it's the hard drive that's gone or if there is another problem.

My other question is.......If my hard drive is ok, can I put it in another machine as a piggy-back (slave drive) even though it still has WIN XP on it, and so does the primary drive?

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Have you tried doing a repair install on your original computer?

http://www.geekstogo...ws-XP-t138.html

If this does not work your hard drive has either gone bad or the file system has been corrupted. If it is the file systemhas gone bad the drive maker's have utilities you can download to repair the drive so it is useable again. The drive utilities, like Seagate's Seatools, WD's Lifeguard, and Maxtor's Maxblast let you reformat the drive. If the drive has too many bad sectors and cannot be repaired it is time for a new drive.

SRX660

[SRX660]

Have you tried doing a repair install on your original computer?

http://www.geekstogo...ws-XP-t138.html

If this does not work your hard drive has either gone bad or the file system has been corrupted. If it is the file systemhas gone bad the drive maker's have utilities you can download to repair the drive so it is useable again. The drive utilities, like Seagate's Seatools, WD's Lifeguard, and Maxtor's Maxblast let you reformat the drive. If the drive has too many bad sectors and cannot be repaired it is time for a new drive.

SRX660

[Kemasa]

Are you sure that ALL of the power supply is working? It supplies many different voltages and the computer will not work if some are out of spec.

From what you have said, it sounds like there is a problem with your computer. It could be a problem with the motherboard, CPU or power supply. It may have corrupted the filesystem on the disk, so putting it as a second drive and checking out the filesystem would be a good idea. You could also run diags on the disk too.

Even if the disk is completly bad, the screen should show something, which is why it points to something other than the disk. No beeps tends to indicate it is not a video problem, but a problem in one area could cause problems elsewhere (such as too high of a power draw could drop the voltage overall and cause problems, but this is not as likely).

Depending on the type of CPU you have, you might try re-seating it and pressing gently on any socketed items (with the power off and unplugged as many machine still have power when it is off, but plugged in) and see if that makes any difference.

Edited by Kemasa, 22 July 2007 - 01:11 PM.

[fleamailman]

have you got a linux live CD, it will tell you if the computer is running well without touching the harddrive

[Kemasa]

have you got a linux live CD, it will tell you if the computer is running well without touching the harddrive

The computer is not running well if there is nothing on the screen :-). Check the original message.

[dolface755]

No there is nothing showing up on the monitor when I try to boot computer I've reseated the CPU and even put in a new power supply the only other thing I can think of is maybe the cpu is completely blown , which is weird because it's only 2 yrs old and never in contact with anything magnetic or otherwise or maybe there is something wrong with the RAM
any other suggestions would be much greatly appreciated

[Kemasa]

Even if there was a problem with the RAM, the computer should still show some signs of life. The video card and the POST operation should be displayed. It is possible that a bad power supply could toast the CPU (not saying that this happened, just possible). There also could be a problem on the motherboard.