PCTech Forums

Posted: **Thu Apr 29, 2004 11:10 pm**

"Dead PC. No Power when I turn it on."

Last night I was installing my new 160Gb Western Digital hard drive. Well, I didn't think I was gonna
have any problems. At least not hardware problems.

After I screwed it in, I set the jumpers to the propers pins (on both hard drives), I put the IDE(?) cable in. Old hd is set to Master, new hd is set
to slave. I plugged power cords into each hd.

Then, I closed up the case, plugged it back in, and turned the button on to power it up. Nothing! Absolutely nothing. HUH?

I opened it up again, and tried powering it up while i looked in there. When I clicked the power on the fan turned for a second, then quit... but
nothing else.

Does anyone know... is my CPU fried? I don't think even poor hard drive installation would cause that. It should at least power up. Right?

Any help?

Cheers.

Posted: **Thu Apr 29, 2004 11:16 pm**

I dont think the cpu is relevant...i suspect power supply failure.Unplug any unnecessary devices(new drive) and see if it will power up.Its possible that you already had a weak PSU and the extra drive was too much for it.Whats the total system specs? including PSU rating

Posted: **Thu Apr 29, 2004 11:19 pm**

I'm not sure what the PSU is rated.

I am at the library using a public comp. I'll go home and try to unplug the power from some stuff and see what happens. The thing is... the first thing i tried was to unplug the new HD and put things back to the way they were. Still didn't work. So, I'm not sure how that could be the problem.

Thanks though.

Posted: **Fri Apr 30, 2004 1:46 am**

Did you get the power plug put back on the HD's right? The red wire goes towards the IDE cable.
brad

Posted: **Fri Apr 30, 2004 3:07 am**

i'm sure it's right, but i'll check when i go home again.

I think the power cord is keyed so that it can only go in one way.

Posted: **Fri Apr 30, 2004 8:00 am**

in my experience, i had several PSU's with the symptom you describe. Here's what I made of it : for some reason the PSU went into protect mode. Some PSU's take their time getting out of this mode (even up to several hours). After that, you power them up without a problem.
I was never able to detect why they went into protect mode (overcurrent, short or other) Maybe somebody knows more about PSU's and can enlighten us.

A failure in the PSU is also possible, or a bad connection, as the others said. But I mean, don't throw away the psu too fast.

noby

Posted: **Fri Apr 30, 2004 12:43 pm**

Well from what you've said i can tell you for a fact that you have fried something in your pc . i know myself cos ive had the misfortune of doing it myself and when i opened mine up i got exactly the same thing happen the fans slightly moved but that was it. Its not necessarily the processor you've fried though it could be any number of things. When i did it it was the motherboard that went. My suggestion would be to take it to a pc shop and they should be able to tell you whats wrong.

Posted: **Fri May 07, 2004 1:07 am**

I strongly disagree. I'd say a new, more voltage PSU is in order. A new 160gb HD could take up a mass amount of power on a startup, and the PSU you're using isn't strong enough to handle it. I'd say buy a new PSU, they're not that expensive, and try it again. Also, try unplugging your new 160gb hd and your cd rom (or RW, if applicable). Once those devices are unplugged, try to startup again.

Posted: **Fri May 07, 2004 10:26 am**

Go into the bios and check to see that the hd is reconized. Second, unplug a few things like Un4g1v3n suggested and it might just pop up