fr2nkb2k
09-12-2005, 09:27 PM
My neighbor suspected that her hard drive was faulty and wanted me to look at it. So we booted it up, and right off the bat, we got a "hd failure eminent back everything up" warning followed by a boot screen giving us options of which os to run, win safe mode and its various incarnations or just regular windows, yada yada...
i picked safe mode. it booted and when the desktop popped up, scandisk was running already. it ran for about 3 minutes when all of a sudden the whole thing shut down. i thought it was a breaker at first except that everything else on the circuit was on. after checking that and the power strip...everything was in order. i tried to turn it on again, but nothing happened when i pressed the on button. And nothing is still happening.
My list of possible culprits...
1.power supply shorted/fried
i opened the case and was loaded with dust. caked on everything. not only had this thing never been opened it also sat in a garage for who knows how long before she brought it to me. There were even some spiders living in this thing! So i was guessing that perhaps all this dust and external matter caused a short. Also i just grabbed a psu cord i had laying around to test out the cord and swapped it out just make sure this wasn't problem ... nada.
2. could the power button be somehow faulty? i've checked that all the power and led wires are pluged into their proper location on the board about a hundred times but i wonder if the shut down could have tripped the power button up somehow(stretching with this one).
3.i also discovered a an ide cable that had been stripped of its platic insulation so that bare copper wire was exposed...perhaps this caused a short on the board?
4.even with the bad hdd in this thing it should still show the post screen...right?
unless someone else has any recommendationsmy next plan of attack is to find another atx psu and try it on this system .
ps This is an HP pavillion 8776c w/ lite on ps-6161-2h1 188w matx powersupply, one hd, two cd drives, 2 fans, miniscule graphics and sound cards....that's it.
i've found replacements psu's but with shipping they all cost 40-50 $'s and this coupled with the cost of new hdd(another 50 $'s). Why throw an additional 100 bucks into this thing though when you can buy a comperable model for another 100 more?
i picked safe mode. it booted and when the desktop popped up, scandisk was running already. it ran for about 3 minutes when all of a sudden the whole thing shut down. i thought it was a breaker at first except that everything else on the circuit was on. after checking that and the power strip...everything was in order. i tried to turn it on again, but nothing happened when i pressed the on button. And nothing is still happening.
My list of possible culprits...
1.power supply shorted/fried
i opened the case and was loaded with dust. caked on everything. not only had this thing never been opened it also sat in a garage for who knows how long before she brought it to me. There were even some spiders living in this thing! So i was guessing that perhaps all this dust and external matter caused a short. Also i just grabbed a psu cord i had laying around to test out the cord and swapped it out just make sure this wasn't problem ... nada.
2. could the power button be somehow faulty? i've checked that all the power and led wires are pluged into their proper location on the board about a hundred times but i wonder if the shut down could have tripped the power button up somehow(stretching with this one).
3.i also discovered a an ide cable that had been stripped of its platic insulation so that bare copper wire was exposed...perhaps this caused a short on the board?
4.even with the bad hdd in this thing it should still show the post screen...right?
unless someone else has any recommendationsmy next plan of attack is to find another atx psu and try it on this system .
ps This is an HP pavillion 8776c w/ lite on ps-6161-2h1 188w matx powersupply, one hd, two cd drives, 2 fans, miniscule graphics and sound cards....that's it.
i've found replacements psu's but with shipping they all cost 40-50 $'s and this coupled with the cost of new hdd(another 50 $'s). Why throw an additional 100 bucks into this thing though when you can buy a comperable model for another 100 more?