Conputer Wont Start

[JHaigwood]

Hmm... where to start!

Well, originally I had screwed over my hard drive so where it wouldn't boot. So I've been without a working computer for the last 3 months. Last night I purchased a 60GB Maxtor hard drive to install and get going on my computer again. When I got everything connected and ready to go I hit the surge protector switch on, and then flipped the switch on the power supply to turn the computer on. For "ONE" second, maybe not even that, the computer does turn on, then immediately before it does anything it turns back off. I know the computer is getting some kind of power initially because i can see the CPU fan spinning and then coming to a stop after that flicker of power. An LED on the motherboard also flashes on for a second and an LED on my DVD-ROM also turns on for that ONE second. Other than that, it just flickers on and off just as if i had never even attempted to turn it on.

I've been asking around for the last day from people I work with on what they think the problem might be. Some say that it may just be dusty and I need to clean it. Some suggest that the power supply is old and might just need to be replaced. I've been told that it might even be the new hard drive itself. I've done research online and have found some stuff about CMOS but somehow I just dont think thats it, because the computers not even on long enough to check CMOS i dont think. Well anyways, I was wondering if anyone else might know how I can get this fixed before I go and spend some money to have someone fix it for me.

Before the problem with the other hard drive the computer had worked just fine as far as power was concerned, that is whats got me troubled. Nothing has changed. I checked all power connections and made sure all PCI and Memory Chips were secured.

Any ideas? Thanks.

[Bovon]

Welcome to TechIMO

Do the following first.

Disconnect everything...except:
CPU and fan, 1 stick of RAM in DIMM0 or DIMM1 as the manual says. Video card...even an old PCI if one is handy.
No keyboard, no mouse.
Connect the PSU and turn the system on with a small screwdriver to short the two pins where the case switch is plugged into.

If the system POSTs...then we can go further...no POST, and you have a defective motherboard, PSU or possibly a shorted CPU. Even a bad stick of RAM can shut down a system before any POST can happen.

Try the above and let us know the results.

Recheck the 230 / 115 volt switch on the back of the PSU and know that it is in the 115 volt position...

[Atomic Rooster]

What motherboard do you have? Some mobo's have a CPU failsafe mode where the power shuts down if a slow or nonfunctioning CPU fan is detected. Make sure the fan is plugged into the proper fan header and check that the fan is spinning at full speed on another working system.

[jmebonner]

I'd swap that power supply with a known working one if you have access to one. First, though, you should disconnect everything except the absolute necessities (video card) then see if it posts, if so, then try your hdd in there, and then everything else one by one. This will help you find what the problem isn't

EDIT...Bovon, you speed typer, beat me to it!

[Dj-Icer]

could it be the power supply suffers overloaded juice..?

[Bovon]

Actually, I prefer to remove the motherboard from the case and test it out in the open where I can 'get at it'...I never set one up in the case before a trial POST outside of the case first.

In this case, it would appear the system was working prior to some SNAFU earlier...so, the motherboard is probably not shorted out on some screw or board stand off in the mounting setup...but...coulda slipped some fiddling around in the case.

Lotsa new (elcheapo) cases are coming out that have stamped and tapped standoffs for motherboard mounting instead of the nice hex brass motherboard mounting deals. Those stamped and pressed out standoffs have a large surface, and will short the system out on the nearby circuit traces...the cure to these type of cases is...use a fiber washer between the board and standoff..or, a simple application of electrical tape over the standoff with a hole in it will work good. Anything to keep the standoff from coming in contact with the circuit traces that run very close to the mounting holes.

Also...some motherboards do not even have a hole for a screw where there is a stand off...this is a tragedy looking for a place to happen

[MrPurple]

Best way to see if your CPU or RAM or Vid can be casuing this is to hook up the speaker and take EVERYTHING out. Connect the PSU and turn the system on and if you have beeps then your mobo is fine and one of the others is casuing the problem. Then put thing back one at a time starting with the CPU, RAM and video. This way you can eliminate these critical components. If all are working look into the PSU.

[JHaigwood]

Well thanks for all the input... I haven't gotten off work yet to try this stuff out but I'll let you know how it goes when I get back to internet access tomorrow. I just caughed up 60 bucks for a new power supply just to have in case that was the problem and got some new IDE cables just because i'm tired of dealing with ribbon all over my case. Again, thanks for the help.

[JHaigwood]

Well I got home last night and first tried pulling the hard drive out and putting in the one a friend of mine had fixed to see if it that worked. Same result. So now I know the problem wasn't the hard drive. Then I tried just going down to the bare necessities and still didn't work. So as a last resort I unplugged all the power cables and pulled out the PSU and installed the one I purchased last night. Powered up the computer and problem solved. The PSU had gone bad so all I needed was just to replace it.

Now that I can actually get into BIOS now... I have a new problem. I have my 60GB hard drive set as master and my 40GB drive set as slave. I made sure jumpers are correct and that I plugged the IDE cable in correctly. So far so good. When I go into set auto-detection of the hard drives, it finds both of them on master and slave, but it says they are only 7.5GB each. How do I fix this? What might I have done wrong? It worked fine before when I had the 40GB plugged in and had installed Windows XP Pro on it and it showed up as a 40GB then. I must have screwed something up.

Anyways, I also tried to go and see if I can format the drive. The install disk for the 60GB says its best to format from that by booting from CD and loading the MaxBLAST 3 software. So I get in there and run the software, set the partition (still says 7.5GB max btw) and as soon as I hit the button to start the process, it goes right back to the beginning. So somethings messed up there. Now I know I can boot from the Windows XP cd and format the drive that way so I try that. Boot from CD, and it first comes up with a "press f6 to select adapi drivers" or something like that, then next is "press f2 to run windows system recovery". Windows isn't installed on it yet so I wait for it to go on. It proceeds to load all my hardware and finally gets to the point where it says "Starting Windows". Blank Screen. CD Stops spinning and the computer basically just halts right there. So how the hell do I format the drive if I cant even get to where it comes available and just goes blank in the process? Is there some kind of setting I can change?

I'm wondering if I'm gonna have the same result booting from floppy and doing fdisk... What are your thoughts? Thanks again.

[ricksha03]

JHaigwood, your problem is with your CPU and motherboard. I have a 450mhz mobo and it cannot handle and hard drive bigger than a 40gig due to the bios. Check for your bios update setting of that motherboard to make sure that if you need to flash update your bios that needs to be done or you'll never be able to use any hard drive larger than a 40gig.