Broken Computer

Okay here's my problem.
The darn thing wont boot up! It's got a green power light
and a red activity light. When I boot the red activity
light stays solid and the green light doesn't go on at all.
It just wont boot. It doesn't even start to read the cd-
rom drive which it's suppose to do first. So, I took out
the cd-rom drive and put it in this computer and it
worked. Then I put the hard drive in this computer and IT
worked. Then I took out the ram and put it in this
conputer and it also worked. I then put it all back in the
other computer and bam! The same thing. So there's
obviously nothing wrong with the cd-rom drive, hard drive
or the ram. The only thing I can think of next would be
the motherboard, God forbid! None of the little transister
thingies are rounded on top or anything and I don't know
much about motherboards. Could it be anything else? Any
suggestions? Sorry I'm so long winded but I'd appreciate
any help at all.

Thank You

Beau

Could be the power supply - can you swap one in?

--
Noel Paton (MS-MVP 2002-2005, Windows)

Nil Carborundum Illegitemi
http://www.btinternet.com/~winnoel/millsrpch.htm
http://tinyurl.com/6oztj

Please read http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm on how to post messages to NG's

"Beau" wrote in message
...
Okay here's my problem.
The darn thing wont boot up! It's got a green power light
and a red activity light. When I boot the red activity
light stays solid and the green light doesn't go on at all.
It just wont boot. It doesn't even start to read the cd-
rom drive which it's suppose to do first. So, I took out
the cd-rom drive and put it in this computer and it
worked. Then I put the hard drive in this computer and IT
worked. Then I took out the ram and put it in this
conputer and it also worked. I then put it all back in the
other computer and bam! The same thing. So there's
obviously nothing wrong with the cd-rom drive, hard drive
or the ram. The only thing I can think of next would be
the motherboard, God forbid! None of the little transister
thingies are rounded on top or anything and I don't know
much about motherboards. Could it be anything else? Any
suggestions? Sorry I'm so long winded but I'd appreciate
any help at all.

Thank You

Beau

"Beau" wrote in message
...
Okay here's my problem.
The darn thing wont boot up! It's got a green power light
and a red activity light. When I boot the red activity
light stays solid and the green light doesn't go on at all.
It just wont boot. It doesn't even start to read the cd-
rom drive which it's suppose to do first. So, I took out
the cd-rom drive and put it in this computer and it
worked. Then I put the hard drive in this computer and IT
worked. Then I took out the ram and put it in this
conputer and it also worked. I then put it all back in the
other computer and bam! The same thing. So there's
obviously nothing wrong with the cd-rom drive, hard drive
or the ram. The only thing I can think of next would be
the motherboard, God forbid! None of the little transister
thingies are rounded on top or anything and I don't know
much about motherboards. Could it be anything else? Any
suggestions? Sorry I'm so long winded but I'd appreciate
any help at all.

Thank You

Beau

The clue here is the green power light not coming on at all. More than
likely a failed power supply unit, that's where I'd look first.

Steve

Amazingly enough I got it to boot up! I switched the
little reset button on and off on the back of the power
supply. Voila it booted up so you're probably right about
the bad power supply. However it's not recognizing any
drives other than my a Drive. I went into cmos (which I
know virtually nothing about) and did an auto detection
for my primary master, slave and secondarys and it just
said not installed. Now what?
-----Original Message-----
Could be the power supply - can you swap one in?

--
Noel Paton (MS-MVP 2002-2005, Windows)

Nil Carborundum Illegitemi
http://www.btinternet.com/~winnoel/millsrpch.htm
http://tinyurl.com/6oztj

Please read http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm on how to post
messages to NG's

"Beau" wrote in
message
...
Okay here's my problem.
The darn thing wont boot up! It's got a green power
light
and a red activity light. When I boot the red activity
light stays solid and the green light doesn't go on at
all.
It just wont boot. It doesn't even start to read the cd-
rom drive which it's suppose to do first. So, I took out
the cd-rom drive and put it in this computer and it
worked. Then I put the hard drive in this computer and
IT
worked. Then I took out the ram and put it in this
conputer and it also worked. I then put it all back in
the
other computer and bam! The same thing. So there's
obviously nothing wrong with the cd-rom drive, hard
drive
or the ram. The only thing I can think of next would be
the motherboard, God forbid! None of the little
transister
thingies are rounded on top or anything and I don't know
much about motherboards. Could it be anything else? Any
suggestions? Sorry I'm so long winded but I'd appreciate
any help at all.

Thank You

Beau


.

Amazingly enough I got it to boot up! I switched the
little reset button on and off on the back of the power
supply. Voila it booted up so you're probably right about
the bad power supply. However it's not recognizing any
drives other than my a Drive. I went into cmos (which I
know virtually nothing about) and did an auto detection
for my primary master, slave and secondarys and it just
said not installed. Now what?
-----Original Message-----

"Beau" wrote in
message
...
Okay here's my problem.
The darn thing wont boot up! It's got a green power
light
and a red activity light. When I boot the red activity
light stays solid and the green light doesn't go on at
all.
It just wont boot. It doesn't even start to read the cd-
rom drive which it's suppose to do first. So, I took out
the cd-rom drive and put it in this computer and it
worked. Then I put the hard drive in this computer and
IT
worked. Then I took out the ram and put it in this
conputer and it also worked. I then put it all back in
the
other computer and bam! The same thing. So there's
obviously nothing wrong with the cd-rom drive, hard
drive
or the ram. The only thing I can think of next would be
the motherboard, God forbid! None of the little
transister
thingies are rounded on top or anything and I don't know
much about motherboards. Could it be anything else? Any
suggestions? Sorry I'm so long winded but I'd appreciate
any help at all.

Thank You

Beau

The clue here is the green power light not coming on at
all. More than
likely a failed power supply unit, that's where I'd look
first.

Steve


.

More likely you 'crow-barred' the PSU and it's now cooled down and reset
itself. Certainly sounds like a hardware issue.

Take your time and check very carefully that your IDE cables are correctly
seated (at BOTH ends!!) and the right way round AND all your power cables
are correctly inserted and located. Check all cables, for that matter!

Just use your WinMe Startup (floppy) Disk (and your BIOS - of course!) for
testing (rather than trying to boot into WinMe) until you've got your
hardware sorted out.

Mart


"Beau" wrote in message
...
Amazingly enough I got it to boot up! I switched the
little reset button on and off on the back of the power
supply. Voila it booted up so you're probably right about
the bad power supply. However it's not recognizing any
drives other than my a Drive. I went into cmos (which I
know virtually nothing about) and did an auto detection
for my primary master, slave and secondarys and it just
said not installed. Now what?
-----Original Message-----
Could be the power supply - can you swap one in?

--
Noel Paton (MS-MVP 2002-2005, Windows)

Nil Carborundum Illegitemi
http://www.btinternet.com/~winnoel/millsrpch.htm
http://tinyurl.com/6oztj

Please read http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm on how to post
messages to NG's

"Beau" wrote in
message
...
Okay here's my problem.
The darn thing wont boot up! It's got a green power
light
and a red activity light. When I boot the red activity
light stays solid and the green light doesn't go on at
all.
It just wont boot. It doesn't even start to read the cd-
rom drive which it's suppose to do first. So, I took out
the cd-rom drive and put it in this computer and it
worked. Then I put the hard drive in this computer and
IT
worked. Then I took out the ram and put it in this
conputer and it also worked. I then put it all back in
the
other computer and bam! The same thing. So there's
obviously nothing wrong with the cd-rom drive, hard
drive
or the ram. The only thing I can think of next would be
the motherboard, God forbid! None of the little
transister
thingies are rounded on top or anything and I don't know
much about motherboards. Could it be anything else? Any
suggestions? Sorry I'm so long winded but I'd appreciate
any help at all.

Thank You

Beau


.

"Beau" wrote in message
...
Amazingly enough I got it to boot up! I switched the
little reset button on and off on the back of the power
supply.

If this is a reasonbly modern machine, that's the REAL power switch you turned
off and on, not a reset switch.

The so-called power switch on the front of the computer is a "soft" power
switch. In these machines, the power never really turns entirely off, it just
mostly turns off when you either select "Shut-Down" from the Start-Shutdown
menu, or press the power switch. When you press the power switch while it's
mostly off, it turns everything the rest of the way back on.

As Noel said, the power supply probably overloaded some how and locked itself
off. When you cycled the power with the actual power switch it allowed it crow
bar (circuit breaker) to reset and the power supply came back on.

Were you doing something prior to this, like adding a new drive, memory, faster
CPU, or anything?

Voila it booted up so you're probably right about
the bad power supply.

Usually, when I see people have this happen to their PS it's because they've had
some problem attaching or installing something, and they've turned off the
computer via SHUTDOWN or the front panel, but they've forgotten to turn off the
power supply (via that switch or pulling the plug) before they started working
and they've shorted something in the standby circuit while working. Only in a
few cases has it actually been the power supply was really fried. In a couple
of cases I've seen the power supply was too small for the system and it gave a
really good imitation of being bad when it fact it was just doing what it was
designed to to, which was switch off due to overload.

- Bill

Well Bill I'm sure you're right about all that. What
actually started the whole thing is that my girlfriend
said that the monitor just kept turning off. I went to
check it out, Don't really know what I did but had it
running beautifully. LOL. She was also having problems
with her cd-rom drive. So I did take that out and moved
the jumper maybe that's what happened with the power
thing. But like I said I put it in my computer and it
works just fine along with everything else. But that
doesn't explain why when I put everything back together it
wont read any of the primary or seconday drives. I checked
all the connections and am sure that they are connected
properly and secure.
Any suggestions?

Beau
-----Original Message-----
"Beau" wrote in
message
...
Amazingly enough I got it to boot up! I switched the
little reset button on and off on the back of the power
supply.

If this is a reasonbly modern machine, that's the REAL
power switch you turned
off and on, not a reset switch.

The so-called power switch on the front of the computer
is a "soft" power
switch. In these machines, the power never really turns
entirely off, it just
mostly turns off when you either select "Shut-Down" from
the Start-Shutdown
menu, or press the power switch. When you press the
power switch while it's
mostly off, it turns everything the rest of the way back
on.

As Noel said, the power supply probably overloaded some
how and locked itself
off. When you cycled the power with the actual power
switch it allowed it crow
bar (circuit breaker) to reset and the power supply came
back on.

Were you doing something prior to this, like adding a new
drive, memory, faster
CPU, or anything?

Voila it booted up so you're probably right about
the bad power supply.

Usually, when I see people have this happen to their PS
it's because they've had
some problem attaching or installing something, and
they've turned off the
computer via SHUTDOWN or the front panel, but they've
forgotten to turn off the
power supply (via that switch or pulling the plug) before
they started working
and they've shorted something in the standby circuit
while working. Only in a
few cases has it actually been the power supply was
really fried. In a couple
of cases I've seen the power supply was too small for the
system and it gave a
really good imitation of being bad when it fact it was
just doing what it was
designed to to, which was switch off due to overload.

- Bill


.

"Beau" wrote in message
...
Well Bill I'm sure you're right about all that. What
actually started the whole thing is that my girlfriend
said that the monitor just kept turning off. I went to
check it out, Don't really know what I did but had it
running beautifully. LOL.

Well, that's why I asked "Were you doing something prior to this, like adding a
new drive, memory, faster CPU, or anything?"

Sounds like not.

Curious the monitor was turning off. How did you fix that?

She was also having problems
with her cd-rom drive. So I did take that out and moved
the jumper maybe that's what happened with the power
thing.

I've seen them crowbar from that if the power switch wasn't turned off, but
usually they'll put up with it. Messing with the motherboard (memory or CPU) is
more likely to cause a problem.

But like I said I put it in my computer and it
works just fine along with everything else. But that
doesn't explain why when I put everything back together it
wont read any of the primary or seconday drives. I checked
all the connections and am sure that they are connected
properly and secure.
Any suggestions?

That's odd. I've seen something like that where someone had set two drives as
MASTER and put them both on the same cable. The controller saw nothing. And,
of course, some controllers will see nothing at all if both drives are set to
SLAVE. But the drives on the other cable usually still work. The only case I
can recall where I saw ALL the drives disappeared was where one drive had a
faulty READY signal. So long as the drive was in the machine at all, all the
drives were undetectable. Well, and the case where someone had actually blown
up the IDE controllers, but that doesn't sound like your case here.

I thought you'd already tried this, but if not, you might try putting the drives
in one at a time rather than all at once and see which, if any, work.

Hmmm. Also, if your CMOS got zapped, it's possible your IDE controllers got
disabled. Be worth checking to make sure they're still enabled.

- Bill