• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

weird power problem

W

white_rabbit

n00b
Joined
Oct 10, 2003
Messages
35
ok, hers how my problem got started. this particular computer was on while i was finishing up putting it together (its made of old spare parts for my sister) and while i was grabbing something i unintentionally leaned on the case, somehow this made the power go out. there was a slight spark and pop noise. the computer woudlnt turn on after this for a few min, so i left it alone. i came back a few min later and booted up... everything seemed fine (normal boot process and screen), unitl it came to the part where it detects hard drives and cd rom drives. it stops there for a whlie and eventually detects nothing. keep in mind that before the power thing, everything was fine (i was about to install windows). now, upon further investigating i realized that shortly after turning the computer on, the cd rom drive LED fades out. it stays on for a few seconds then slowly but shurely fades away (and the drive never opens). the hard drive LED is always on. i tried switching molex connectors for both but no luck, i even tried another powersupply froma friend, but no luck.

im confused, and stumped. hope someone can help me figure out what happened or what i need to do.
 
Sounds at a glance that you may have smoked the onboard IDE controller.

Try a PCI slot controller card. They're super cheap, and if it doesn't solve the problem - extra utility hardware is always handy to have around.

Good luck.
 
Originally posted by CQ7
Sounds at a glance that you may have smoked the onboard IDE controller.

Try a PCI slot controller card. They're super cheap, and if it doesn't solve the problem - extra utility hardware is always handy to have around.

Good luck.
Click to expand...

this... or it might be that drives are dead...
 
i do have a pci slot controller card, ill try that. and ill also try different drives for the cd rom and hard drive. ill post the outcome.
 
alright ive been struggling with this thing since i last posted. but it seems i have discovered the problem.

i barrowed a friends cd rom drive and extra hard drive in case i needed either or to test to see if the ones i was using werent working properly. well after swapping them back and forth (between mine and his) the weird led problem went away and everything was fine. until it came time to boot win instalation from cd. the cd rom drive i had would hang before it would reach the point where it needs to say to boot from cd press any key. so i just plugged in the barrowed cd rom drive and it worked. but while attempting to install windows 2000 on both hard drives i would get a blue screen error (not the same one more than once) after the installation files are copied and the computer restarts to go into gui installation. the blue screen would come up right before the windows 2000 loading screen. i was stumped and decided to give it a rest. i came back a day later and booted up... and it worked and went into installation. now, this has been a trend for this computer in terms of errors.. whatever error i got i wouldnt be able to recreate a long time after i first got it. as in, if a blue screen came up... i would get it again if i restarted (sometimes) but if i came back after a long time it woudl be fine.

so i installed windows and got a blue screen while attempting to boot for first time. so i restarted, it worked. i setup wifi and everything was fine. in the middle of getting vid card drivers from nvidia, i got a very quick blue screen that resulted in the computer restarting itself after not even a sec. after the restart everything was fine, and i got the drivers. now.. during all this i had unconsiously heard and noticed a weird noise... i had though, up to this point, that it was my friends cd rom drive and that thats how it read cds... but i was wrong. upon closer investigation i noticed the noise was coming from the power supply. and its an odd noise, sort of like a corss between retarted cd rom read noises and a fan hitting wires/clickety sound. i began to think the whole unstableness (i know its not a word, sue me) is from the psu. and im almost certain its from the psu becuase after a boot last night, i tried windows update and ie would get an error, and it would repelat this error everytime i tried to maximize the window... and where im certain is that when i open ie this noise i heard from the psu comes. with every click to open ie i hear that noise.

now, what i want to do is make sure for certain its the psu... are there any programs i can get that will tell me its voltage outputs... and are there any basic reference voltages i can compare them to (its a 300w generic) to see if it indeed is the psu that has given up.
 
You need to go get either a multimeter or a voltohmeter and measure them yourself, a software based solution will not be adaquite.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top