pc not powering up

sound_wave

hey ,
just asking this for a friend..he turned on his pc a few days ago and it wouldnt power up. he said it sounded like it was about to power on but then it died..

also his hard drive is not being recognised by other motherboards,...



could this mean he needs a new motherboard, power supply or is his hard drive fecked?



anyone got any ideas of what may be the problem.

thanks

Pat

Smithers

swap power cords with ur monitor and try to power up ,

then its a good auld system strip , take out each component piece by piece and try and power up after each time , if ur at the end then its either ur power supply or mobo ,

well this is only in my opinion!!

not an expert of anything

disco_rob_funk

No fans spinning? PSU

critical test for motherboard FUBAR'dness... take out the RAM and boot. NO beeps? Mobo FUBAR. Beeps? Check Elsewhere.

test for HDD...take it out & boot with everything else plugged in. If you get a message on screen saying "op. sys. not found" or "please insert boot disk" etc. HDD is at fault.

CPUs rarely go dodgy unless badly O/C'd.

RAM if ever dodgy is usually dodgy right out of the box.

Failing that, 8 beeps denotes graphics problem, failing that, whip out all PCI cards

Ruu_Old

Summary of what the guys said

check all power cables and ide cables.
check to make sure ur memory is correctly seated.

Use trial and error, remove the PCI or AGP graphics card whatever u have until it boots up. Mine got a blast of electricty down the phone line and it took out the modem only luckily enough.

try a different power unit and get back to us

Capt'n Midnight

ATX power supply can be controlled by the mother board...

But if there is a short then sometimes the PSU will trip out to protect itself - hence unplug all the connectors.

If there is no load then it may also trip out to prevent itself going overvoltage so have a HDD connected to it.

Dell Optiplexes used to have a PSU with at thermostat fan - so the fan was not on most of the time..

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Plugging the IDE cable in backwords usually hangs the bus - no boot but should have some fans going.

Putting the FDD power cable on the worng pins will short out the PSU - and it will protect itself by tripping out.

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In some cases an ATX psu will go overvoltage and fry everything (never heard of this happening to AT but that's progress) also a ligtnening strike or other voltage spike can kill lots of things...

sound_wave

hey everyone thanks for the replies!!

got it sorted ..the mobo was at fault..so it looks like a new moob for my friend..he might as well update his whole system while he is at it but he wont listen..:rolleyes:

thanks once again everyone

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Pat
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