I killed it dead... Now what? ( puter question )

Factual Questions
1

I killed it dead… Now what?

Was trying to add a backup hard drive to the wife’s computer and so I blew out the tower, added the drive, moved the “C” drive to a different bay and swapped out the “A” drive as hers was acting up.

Will not boot… at all … from anything … Checked and rechecked, drive jumpers, … unhooked all unnecessary stuff…

Monitor is getting power. “A” drive gets a light, fans run, “C” drive spins and gets a green light but I only get a red activity light for a few seconds… then red light goes out… never get any BIOS screen, nada, nope , nuttin…Stripped out to original set up, still no joy, same symptoms… was working just fine … grrrrr

Okay, where to look? What to look at?

Power supply seems to be running cooling fans, hard drive fine. I can feel them spinning, monitor seems okay, change the “A” drive 3 times, tried with and with out. Swapped IDE positions … Triple checked hard drive jumpers, tried to boot from a “A” disk, tried to boot with a CD boot disk in place, Changed ribbon cables, went back to original swapped again… What to do?

850 HZ processor
Win 98se
512 mg RAM
I can’t even put in a new drive and reinstall windows because I can’t even get the BIOS to run?

What could I have done to kill that? Can that be fixed by ME???

Can blowing the dust out have broken what? Where?

Splain me some stuff somebody please…

*::: ex-puter fixer of wife’s puter forever no more will I be… *

2

The most common cause of this sort of thing is flipping the data cable upside down. Note that some drives have pin 1 (the side with the stripe on the cable) on the opposite side to other drives. That’s the great thing about standards, there’s so many to choose from!

Anyway, try removing the data cable from both drives and see if it boots. If so, add the drives one at a time until you get the cables oriented right.

If it doesn’t boot when you disconnect the drives, then you probably just knocked something loose. Reseat the CPU and memory and see what that gets you. Also check to make sure you didn’t knock loose any cables. The motherboard will have a big power cable and will have another smaller power cable for the CPU core. If the CPU core power is disconnected it will give pretty much the symptoms you describe.

Erm… scratch that. I just noticed the CPU speed. You don’t have a pentium 4, so you won’t have the core connector. I’ll leave that paragraph in though just in case someone else has a similar problem.

3

Hummm, thanks, I didn’t thunk to do dat… brb

4

Nope — only thing hooked up is the monitor, “A” drive and a few fans…

Get fans and lights on mother board, monitor says to ‘check cables and that is is ok’ … no BIOS or anythning… Ram is seated good and CPU is tight.

Could I have blown a jumper off someplace that would cause this? Was no lose screws nor static jumps, what can I check? COMOS battery?

Almost acts like some cercuit breaker is tripping but I see notheing staring and stioppin except the red light ( activity light ) on the hard drive when it is hooked up, it goes for a few seconds then dropps off. the drive is still spinning, I can fell it running.

But with all unhooked, still no BIOS boot… ???

5

Try disconnecting the floppy drive - it could be that this is the thing with the cable the wrong way around (usually a little tab on the connector prevents connecting it wrong, but not always).

6

Yes, been there, done that also…

Is there something ro some place on th emother board to check for power or a jumper or something to maybe tell why it won’t boot BIOS?

7

My motherboard will let me boot to BIOS without a processor in place - only needs power and memory. So you could try pulling your CPU as well, and seeing if you can get as far as the BIOS.

Clutching at straws a bit, I’m afraid.

8

It might also be worth locating the CMOS reset jumper and using it (which will consist of either shorting out a pair of jumper pins or moving or removing a jumper) - this will put all of your BIOS settings back to the factory defaults (which could actually be inconvenient in some ways), but it might help and it’s worth a try. IMO. YMMV etc.

9

Like matt said, try removing everything. Take out the network card, sound card, and all drive cables. You want it to at least beep for you. Unfortunately I don’t know of any way of figuring out why the BIOS is having problems just by looking at the board (unless it is giving you beep codes. From your post it sounds like the computer doesn’t beep at all). Resetting the BIOS is a good idea too.

If it still won’t post to the BIOS you may have to start asking around for parts from friends. Try a replacement power supply, video card, CPU, and RAM. If none of that works you may need a new motherboard.

10

Ok, got all the leads and cables pulled from the MB. I looked at the monitor cable and the middle row of pins on the cable is missing a pin second from the end in the middle row on the end where the row is shorter VS the end where the middle row sticks out past the top and bottom row,. No broken pin in the female receptacle on the video card so it is prolly normal. ??

When this first started, the activity light would act and the “A” drive would act as if there was some attempt to try to boot in sequence but there has been no bios boot attempt.

I don’t have the book or online copy of the MB but will look for the BIOS jumper and reset the COMOS battery and stuff.

May un-mount the MB and see if in blowing out the dust, I got something on the back side that is shorting something out. I am very gentle with puters so I don’t see why such a drastic change from my handling.

Taking the CPU off and scares me. Will be last resort…

If I can get a BIOS boot, I can reset all the other stuff as I add it and stuff and such.

More ideas please.

11

I really need the motherboard Information. but Blindy…

It sounds like you used ‘air’ to clean out the dust? That’s not good. That creates static. You may have blown an IC, statically. That’s hard to pinpoint without a Takaya Machine that test each lead and solder joint of the PCB.

Check for a jumper casing that may not be completely fitted down. these can be located UNDER the mobo too.

the jumper looks like a very small domino. They are usually located near the BIOS IC. Just check EVERY SINGLE Jumper. they look like this .

12

Thanks for all the help folks, I would not have got it without you all making me think it through.

Long story short… It was the video card in that the metal tang on the end that attaches to the back of the computer where you plug in the monitor cable was not correct and had the video card in a bind and it would gradually pull out just enough to kill it.

Much cussing and going through all the old spare cards looking for one that allowed the video card to sit properly and a bit of modification on the one I found and now that part of the problem was done.

Also, the “A” drive had pooped out just by my messing in there with fat fingers… Going through all the old “A” drives laying around, I found I had 4 bad ones and now have only one working spare that is not in a computer… But the one in the wife’s computer is working now, as is the back-up hard drive in a removable bay and the “C” drive is being mirrored to “D” as I type.

All was checked before backing up, going on line , all parts more or less in at least a lose formation so when the copy is done, I can open the rack a bit and have a good to go copy of her system incase disaster strikes… ( that was all I was trying to do in the first place. I have already done it to my computer and was just getting it done for her. Teach me to try to make it ( her computer ) better ever again… I’m gonna leave it alone from now on forever, I will fight it again no more… ) *::: yeah… right … Bawahahaha … I know me … ::: sigh ::: *