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Hard drive wont let my computer start


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#1
dngortegae

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I came home last friday and smelled an electrical burn smell. I quickly found out that it was my psu. So I go to best buy and purchase an antec 500w psu. I take it back and install it. Start my comp and nothing. I noticed my fans spin for a second or less. No beeps from board. It turns off after that.

I unplug everything and try to start my comp. It gets through the post and gets to a screen where it is asking for something to load from. So i start adidng tings one by one. I get 2 disk drives, 1 floppy drive. All three arerecognized by bios in the setings and setup. Stll waiting for something to load from. I try to add hdd and now it is back to nothing. Bad Hdd? Bad bios? reset cmos? Idont know how to fix this and my wife is winning the "i told you to not touch that" war. Please help me fix this and shut my wife up!!!!
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#2
dsenette

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try resetting the bios.... and could you give me the make and model of your mother board..and the same with the psu
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#3
dngortegae

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I took the battery out for 15 minutes..... same result... I have an asus motherboard..... Tats all I know. I have an antec 500 he neo PSU. this blows!!!!
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#4
macten

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You may have received a voltage surge or if it was a cheap power supply it may have shorted out. Regardless, when they go, they tend to take out motherboards, hardrives etc. I once had a power supply short out and it took out both hardrives. The bios would not recognize either one. But in your case, it sounds like the bios does see the hardrives. One thing you can do is (using your other pc or a friends) go to the hardrives manufacturer website and download their utilities to a floppy or cd. You can then boot right from that floppy or cd and the utility will run tests on the hardrive and tell you if it's any good or not.

edit: here's a link to some boot troubleshooting flow charts:

http://www.fonerbooks.com/cpu_ram.htm

if you scroll down a bit on the left side, you can click on more devices for their particular flow charts.

Edited by macten, 26 January 2006 - 07:29 PM.

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#5
dngortegae

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I cant use this utility from seagate because when my hdd is hooked up the system wont do anything but come on for a second. I wish I had a hot swapable system!!!!!! I am probably going to buy a new hdd tonigh and move to data recovery at this point.
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#6
macten

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When you say: 'come on for a second', do you mean that the fan in the power supply spins for a second and dies? If so, in my experience that is the sign of a blown power supply but you said that you swapped it out.
So...?????

edit...thinking about it. When you throw the switch, the power supply makes some checks and if all is ok, it sends a 'power good' signal to the motherboard. Once the motherboard receives this signal it will boot up. But it sounds like the mother board is not receiving the 'power good' signal from the power supply or the mother board is shot and incapable of interpreting the signal.....

Edited by macten, 27 January 2006 - 06:55 AM.

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#7
macten

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<<I cant use this utility from seagate because when my hdd is hooked up the system wont do anything but come on for a second>>

Does the fan in the power supply die or continue to spin?
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#8
dngortegae

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I will have to look at it when I get home, but I believe that it stops spinning also.

It will come up without the hdd attached.
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