Power problems?

lphchild

Hi all,
Have a PIII 500 on a Tyan100 Dual m/b running 2cd drives, 2 hd's, 512 RAM, loads of PCI cards, GF MX2, and USB modem on Win2k..

Hadn't plugged in USB modem in ages and machine had been fine..plugged it in, started restarting (3X)- took it out, won't power on the monitor, although the drives all spin up..any suggestions?

Cheers,
lphchild

EvilGeorge

If I'm reading that right you plugged in a usb device and now you monitor will not power up.

Do you have a usb hub on the monitor or is this on the PC ?

Does your monitor draw power seperately or is it one on these mad cables that goes through the machine ?

lphchild

Plugged in USB modem to PC, monitor works and is power seperately..PC won't power it on/wake it on boot- "No signal", etc

lph

po0k

It seems blindingly obvious to meh, and correct me if i'm wrong but u either need to loose some addons ie CDRom or hdd or get ur ass a new power supply for ur case
The USB shouldn't use that much power at all, its about 500mA x the resistance of teh modem = voltage/time used(secs) = watts it uses. if ur going adding it all up make sure u include the start up watage requirements for the drives as tehy require more to get going then t maintaina a steady speed
imo

Kegser

First of all; Did/does your machine normally beep during POST? If so; is it still beeping?

Secondly; You say the drives spin up but are you actually hearing the machine run through it's normal startup; as in, does the machine appear to be loading up Windows and is your HDD LED flashing?

Did you perchance give your monitor cable a knock while attaching the USB device? Could you have inadvertantly knocked the cable out of place or bent some pins? Although unlikely; it has happened.

Have you checked all your connections? ie removed and reattached them?

Have you tried booting the machine in a minimal configuration; ie with your CPU, RAM and graphics card only in the machine? Do you still get no signal?

There's so many different things it could be unfortunately... so I can't be much help.

One more thing; you'd want to have a decent quality PSU in the machine, as all those drives and cards hog power; and a poor quality PSU may cause problems.

yankinlk

try coldbooting everything...

turn off and unplug monitor
turn off and unplug machine
turn off and unplug modem

wait 30 seconds

plug em all back in and try again...(maybe try without the modem first tho)

lphchild

Way ahead o' ya yanklink

Tried it no joy tried reseating the lot as well, still nothing -am gonna try wiping CMOS l8r but am really at a loss..

lph

lphchild

Done everything - still no joy
Ordered a new PSU ..hopefully that might
help..if not at least i have a start for a machine upgrade

lph

Renton

Longshot, but its happened to me before, get a magnifying glass, (or just VERY closesly) and make sure the pins havent crossed and ended up touching each other, The PSU Will detect this and automatically shut the power off.

Try removing ALL Cards except Video, unplugging all the IDE Cables, and Floppy cables, and try to power it on, just incase somethings causing it, if you do get power after that, try replugging cards & cables in one by one, and find your fault that way.
Dont let it boot back into windows while you are doing all of this, you dont want windows going mad cos all the devices have disapeared

You could in theory (but i'd advise against it) try to short pin 4 from the ATX power cable against an earth connection (case?) and that will spin up the power supply until you break the connection. At least u can tell if it works, although if you do it wrong, u might zap urself. Its usually the green one. If you do decide to do that, mail me rento@eircom.net and i'll go into a bit more detail on it.

If all else fails, replace the PSU, if theres no joy then, replace the motherboard, time for an upgrade anyway

RentZ

Kegser

Don't be too sure it's the PSU; it could very well be the motherboard.

Oh and Renton, don't be silly.