Field Report:
-Tried a power cord from a different PSU, didn’t work.
-Tried a different PSU, didn’t work. A note about the 2nd PSU, it was only 230W and didn’t even have the full amount of connections to fully connect my motherboard. That said, I only connected it to the fan connected to my case.
Are we able to actually draw any conclusions from this? Should I still connect the 2nd PSU to what it can connect to on my motherboard?
Tried my main power supply in the old computer and a light on the motherboard would turn on and stay on. When I should try to power on the old computer the lights on the front of the computer would flash and nothing else would happen.
New motherboard? Nuke the damn thing from orbit?
Success!
I just forgot one of the second connections the PSU needs to be done to the motherboard. So the second power supply turned on my computer yes. Complete with boot up process and everything. It did stop though because my hard drive was not connected to any power. As far as I could tell, the old power supply didn’t have any connector that actually went into the hard drive.
Still, success.
Next order of business, new power supply.
Recommendations?
Sorry…I just debug things…occasionally. I can’t help with selection of new stuff.
Besides…if you actually get a new one, and it works, then how is this a neverending saga?
-D/a
I’ve had good luck with Corsair and Antec PSUs. The newer modular designs are nice and keep a lot of extra cables from obstructing airflow.
It’s the never ending saga because this isn’t the first thread I’ve started regarding computer issues. Usually hardware related, I’m apparently quite good at keeping my sofware good, hardware not so much.
What is the difference between modular and nonmodular?
Modular PSUs have connectors at both ends of the cables so you only hook up what you need, thus eliminating the usual bunch of extraneous cables hanging in your case.
Okay, got me a fancy new Antec 750W PSU. Hooked it all up now I’m getting an error that says for me to insert system disk and press enter.
System disk refers to the hard drive, correct? I surely hope so because that thing is plugged to the PSU and motherboard exactly like it’s supposed to be.
Thoughts?
See now why it is the never ending saga?
You sure you got the power AND data connections in place and connected properly?
yes redo (unplug and replug) the data and power cables to the hard drive.
after power on go into the CMOS setup and have it find the hard drive. in your experimenting it may have dropped the hard drive as a booting device.
Okay, CMOS:
IDE Channel 0 Master (none)
IDE Channel 0 Slave (none)
Says none the whole way down for all the channels.
Set it for Auto Detect.
ETA: If your PC is all factory OEM, there may be a reset to defaults option that will put it all back to how it was.
ETA2: You must have unplugged your CMOS battery at some point, I guess? Otherwise, replacing the battery is gonna be the next fix you’ll have to perform.
There is a “previous values” option, “fail safe defaults”, and “optimized defaults”. As far as I can tell, no actual difference between them. Also, auto detect didn’t get us past (passed?) the aforementioned error.
I can keep screwing with the cables to see if that helps but it will be treading old ground.
Yes the system disk will be the hard drive with your operating system on it usually “C”
I get this same message each time I do anything to a drive even just unplug to reseat the connections. I have to reset the drive Boot order in the BIOS.
Don’t know if this has been covered but in most cases to get into the BIOS hit the “DELETE” repeatedly during Boot Up then navigate to the Boot tag and set the HDD as No1 boot.
Don’t forget to save as you exit or you’ll have to start over. 
Yeah, go into your bios as your booting and look around for hard drive settings - if you can’t figure it out, write down your bios version and Google it for a basic help file.
click on the drive entry and it will open an entry for putting in the specifications and likely ‘autodetect’. the autodetect is the thing that is easiest.
and are your drives IDE?
SATA drives my not be autodetected and show no entry. you need to click on the entry to bring up autodetect there as well.
It is a SATA drive that we’re having trouble with. It never gave me any trouble when first putting the computer together, that I can remember.
Also, every channel was already set to Auto, and if not, I made sure that they are all set to Auto now.