Computer won't boot after new HD install.

[rustyfly]

Hey guys - I'm new to the forums but I hope someone can help me figure this out before, you know, I implode.

A friend of mine had his hard drive die and he bought a new Western Digital 160 GB hard drive to replace it with. I've replaced hard drives many times so I told him I'd install it for him. I hooked it up to the power supply and the IDE cables, installed the new PCI card, set the jumper, etc. and stood back to examine my fine work.... only to dicover that the machine isn't getting any power. Yay.

I had to jostle a lot of stuff around to get the drive in, but I was pretty careful about reseating all the wires/drives, etc. I hit power and nothing happens... except the red led light on the motherboard comes on.

Now, I've never had any trouble installing hardware before, but I'm certainly no techie. What gives? His machine is about three years old and was custom built by some shop in town. It looks like pretty cheap components, but still... the machine was running before I took it apart and now I feel like a stooge.

I'd greatly appreciate any advice on things I can try or what the problem might be.

[John Prophet]

Welcome to the forum!

I suppose the best thing to do would be sort of retrace your steps.

Maybe first just open it up and reseat all the cards...maybe you just bumped something. Reseat the video card, the pci cards and the ram.

if that doesnt work, pull out the new pci card and unhook the new hard drive and try it then.

If it DOES work after that..maybe try the pci card in another slot.

If THAT doesnt work...pull out all the pci cards, lol (try to remember which slots they are in, put em back the same way if possible.) try it like that.

JP

[Wombat]

I agree with John p,
But we also need more info on the sys. Age (Iknow youn mentioned 3 yr old, speed, etc. Also was the HD partitioned (I know this does not effect the machine turning on but it would be nice to know in case you have more problem later)


Paul


P.S. Welcome to Techimo

[Hungrycookpot]

maybe you bumped loose a power cord jumper cable thingy, check those that happened to me, and thats what it was

[rustyfly]

Thanks John! I appreciate the suggestion. I tried reseating all the cards and pulled all but one stick of RAM out, disconnected the PCI card and the hard drive... no change.

Paul, It's a brand new drive; there aren't any partitions yet. The machine is 800 mhz and that's about all I know. It looks like he's got two cheapie video cards and a coolermaster fan.

Power cord jumper cable thingie? That sounds promising... where can I find me one of those? Is that coming out of the power supply?

Speaking of the power supply, his only appears to be 235(!) watts. Is it possible it's just too lame to power two video cards, a CD-R, floppy, and the new hard drive?