I'm getting computer withdrawal jitters...

[Scrolling Days]

My 1 1/2 year old computer stopped working 2 days ago and I'm getting computer withdrawal big time. I'm typing now from a work computer as I had some stuff to finish up in the office tonight. Without the internet, I feel like I'm living in a bubble, LOL.

I have a Hewlitt Packard and spent quite a bit on it. All of a sudden it just wouldn't turn on. I press the power button and.....nothing. No fan, no lights...nothing.

I figure it's either the on/off switch (unlikely), the power supply or (shiver) the motherboard. I do have a faint green light in the back of my computer when it is powered, but it's very dim.

I spent yesterday scrambling around for a 300 watt ATX power supply. I ended up bringing my computer to a supply store, he pooped of the cover and sold me a 350 watt which he said would fit.

Got home, took apart the computer, and removed (with assistance from my computer savvy friend) several components so that I could disconnect and remove the old power supply. Once out, the new one wouldn't fit. The motherboard connecter had 20 prongs, whereas my motherboard accepts 24.

Grrrrrrr.

We tested the power supply and it read zero amps. Tested the new one....also read zero amps. Something wrong with the ampmeter.

Now I'm decideing whether I should just order the exact power supply from Hewlitt Packard ($68 after delivery) when it might not be the problem at all, or just give the whole thing over to a computer repair company.

Grrrrrr.

Anyhow, I'll log on when I can, but it looks like I'll be in my computerless bubble for a while.

[JohnB]

G'day Shawn, when you next get into work or get your puter back up and running.
I feel your frustration. My youngest's computer went bottom up a year or so ago. We did the same thing, bought a power supply, wouldn't fit, bought a case and power supply, it fitted, but nothing happened. Concencus Mother board. I hope yours is just the power supply mate. That and the PS Fan seem to be the most vulnerable parts on these finicky machines.

I hope your reading this on your own machine.

[joez71]

Hi Shawn, 8/10 times its a powersupply. Personally i'd find a friendly computer shop and get them to plug one in before buying. If they just hang it off the case and plug it in , it would only take a minute to do.

The ATX powersupplies i have been buying have 20 prongs but theres a smaller 4 prong part that slides onto it (with seperate power) to adapt it to 24 prong power supplies.

Having said that most brand name manufactures use not standard sized powersupplies, so you'll have to go back to them for parts.

EDIT: found a pic if you look closely at the right side of the plug you can see the extra 4 prong part that just slides on and off.


joez71

[jim_mex]

Hi Shawn - i feel for you! I've spent far too many hours ove r the past 10 years stripping down computers that have gone belly up on me. My supposedly hi-end desktop cpu has been stuck in a closet for 18 months with a faulty graphic card and suspect motherboard and since then I've had a lñarge external monitors and numerous external drives hooked up to my Viao laptop which was topend when i bought it 4 years back but is now starting to show its age.

From you description of the problem I'd suspect the power supply first off. Any generic power supply that fits your box is worth trying but i suggest you go for a higher wattage one, preferably 400 - 500 watt just in case you decide to do any upgrading later on - a lot of new motherboards struggle with the anything less than 400 watt.

Going to HP unless your unit is still under guarantee will probably only mean spending a lot more money and not necessarily solving the problem and you are probably better going the repair shop route. but if you do make sure you get at least a 30 day guarantee from them

Hope you get sorted - good luck!

[scrollpup]

Hi Shawn.I was wondering about ya when you didn't make chat the other night.The only technical advise I can offer is "have you tried hitting it?"If it doesn't help the computer,it might help you

Good luck on getting it up and running again.


Jerry

[Scrolling Days]

Well, bad got worse, I think. Just came in to the office to check my email from the computer here...still having issues with mine.

I bought a new power supply (which had the 24 pin motherboard adapter, etc), and we got it connected okay. Turned on the computer and.....I got power!! Felt pretty good there for a bit until we hooked up the monitor and saw a message implying that there was a "boot error" and telling me to insert system disc. My buddy is pretty good with computers and he is telling me that it is not picking up my hard drive when booted. There is also a banging noise when the computer boots.

I have no idea what's going on now.

Here's what happened:

Weather forecast: thunderstorms.

Step taken by me: Powered down through Windows. Unplugged surge protector (with computer plugged in) from wall.

Storm went through

Plugged surge protector back into wall.

Computer would not power up......you know the rest.

I'm trying to figure out how the hard drive could be screwed up. It looks like all of our connections are right and my buddy checked them multiple times.

Oh, well. Probably a lot of data lost forever (including a lot of my puzzle stuff ) and to the store to waste more money on another computer which will likely fail in one year.

Grrrrrr.

Okay, grump session over.

[jim_mex]

Hi Shawn

Sounds like you may well have fried your drive but before you go spending loads of money ask your PC savvy friend to connect your drive to the secondary IDE or SATA connection of a different computer and see if it can be read. It could be that your problem is more motherboard related than drive although I have to confess that the banging sound is more likely the drive.

If the drive has physical damage due to an electrical discharge during the storm then there's not a deal you can do to recover data unless you want to pay very big bucks to a data recovery company.

If the drive has screwed disk partition information such as the master boot record it is recoverable through software it just takes someone who knows what they are doing to claw the info back and it needs a lot of time and patience.

Just for your info, if you do get another PC get your friend to split your drive into a number of partitions and store ALL your personal data, files etc outside of drive C (the operating system partition). Unfortunately Microsoft doesnt like you to do this and will always suggest you store in My Documents or similar folders - ignore this! Its a well known fact that folks regularly screw up the access to drive C: either by accidently deleting system files, having a power surge or outage during shutdown, or simply being attacked by a nasty virus. If either of these things happens to you it usually means reinstalling Windows plus drivers and software into the C: drive partition and wiping out EVERYTHING previous stored there. At least if you store your personal stuff outside of C: - for example in a newly created drive partition D (or similar) you will not lose this info and it will be available again once you are back up and running.

A last comment for what its worth. I live in an area which is prone to very bad power supply and also suffers terrific electric storms. After having 3 PC's fry on me over a 4 year period I decided to switch to using my top end laptop as my desktop, coupled to a large external monitor and spare external drives. For the past 2 years this has kept me safe apart from having one laptop power adapter fail on me. Its seems the laptop power adapters are more robust than a typical PC power supply and dont readily transmit surges to the innards of the laptop

Famous last words which i will probably regret

Sorry for your problems. Hope you get sorted soon

[KtownScroller]

Jim: I repair computers on the side. All the above steps make perfect sense to me. That's good information.

If the drive is noisy, that is a very bad sign. Usually all data is lost. If you piggyback the damaged drive to another computer system you will know for sure. I have a program on CD that creates a virtual ram drive (no hard drive needed to boot-up). I use the program to help me figure out if the motherboard is operational. With it you can also look at the hard drive. If the hard drive cannot be found then R.I.P.! I would help you out Shawn, but you are about six hours away from me. That would be a heck of a service call!!!

A few months ago I had a computer that had a bad power supply and a bad hard drive. Evidently a thunder storm really gave the system a jolt. The owner was none too happy with the news. Unfortunately these things happen. The best cure is to back up your data on an external drive or on one of those flash drives. Even better yet, why not burn it all to DVD. It may take awhile, but it will be worth it.

One more thing Shawn, when you disconnected the computer was the telephone line or cable modem still connected? If so, this is the source of the damage. One more thing to check.

[jim_mex]

Hi Rick - thanks for the supportive comment

was the telephone line or cable modem still connected?

This is one bit I missed and should have mentioned since my first PC was fried when a lightening strike hit the overhead cables in the street and the surge passed down the telephone line, through my modem and no-break and to my PC. A really scary occurrence since my no-break burst into flames and being set into a wooden cabinet would have burnt the lot down if i hadn't have been working in the office at the time to spot the damage. A real good incentive for my next major purchase - a wireless modem!!!

BTW - talking of bad/corrupted drives. The second time I ran into problems the drive became corrupted. A computer savvy friend of my insisted that the only solution was to reformat and reinstall Windows. As I had a load of important work files on C: drive - bad mistake I've since learnt from! - I panicked but eventually gave him the go ahead. A few days later, whilst trying to educate myself on the net ref reasons for corruption and data recovery software in general I came across a proggie called Winternals ERD Commander 2007. With this I managed to recover the partition present before reformatting the drive and got 95% of my work files back - boy was i pleased! This is now a treasured piece of software which has also helped me recover lost or deleted partitions from a number of friends' drives. Curiously though I was looking for an update to it a few weeks back and the company has been taken over by, you've guessed it, Microsoft, and the software is no longer available. Sometimes I wonder if these MS guys really like screwing with the public, but most times I reckon I know - LOL!

[Scrolling Days]

LOL, now I'm typing from a courtesy computer at my local coffee shop.

Thanks for the advice, guys.

Rick, all of my attachments (ethernet cable, phone line, cable, etc, go through my surge protector (high end) and I disconnected the entire protector from the wall before the storm even came. That's what doesn't really make sense to me is how this all happened.

Oh, well. I like the laptop idea, though. I think I'll check those out today.