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#1
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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 |
#2
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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 |
#3
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"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 |
#4
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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 . |
#5
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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 . |
#6
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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 . |
#7
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"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 |
#8
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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 . |
#9
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"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 |
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