Is anyone good with computers?

[John]

Angus's computer seems to have had the Power Supply Unit blow up. It seems to have fried the rest of his computer i think but not sure how to test. The harddrive doesnt seem to want to boot when put in another computer it just shows a blue screen and then reboots.

Does anyone know much about this type of thing.

The PSU is a Enermax Model: EG565P-VE

/>http://australianfishing.com.au/forum?func=view&catid=99&id=194284

[dhess]

I pretty much know sweet FA about this kind of thing but maybe your best bet would be to shove the HD into an IDE/SATA USB external enclosure for $25 fom somewhere like www.msy.com.au and try browsing the drive from another computer that is already booted up.

Probably complete crap and a long shot but maybe the issue lies in the drive just not being bootable from another system.

[Feral]

She's stuffed.

You might find Angus's computer may boot and run if you have another hard drive plugged in to the other drive connection. (nothing in to the one where the fried drive was)

[Do$tylz]

what computer is it? and what type of harddrive (sata/ide)??

Does the blue screen come up with white data saying something is missing or corrupt??

[planetfonz]

dhess is on the money

use msy.com.au or www.umart.com.au and buy the bits of a new machine for cheap and build another.. once a psu fries things there's no luv

[Davo_Dinkum]

try putting it in another machine as the second drive and run a data recovery on it so u can get your stuff back.

u can also do this in dos ,but i don't know how .but u can go in in dos find the file u want and recover them.

what type of computer a laptop or desktop?

[Shorty]

Smell the back of the power supply, if it smells burnt, the power supply is toast. You will know as soon as you smell it. It's not so much a strong smell as a smell of fried circuits. :S A replacement power supply isn't expensive too!! If you unplug the power cable from the power supply and then slowly plug it back in, you should hear a spark as the power supply picks up on the power from the cable.

When the machine starts to boot up, do you hear any beeps coming from the computer? If the hard drive is totally fried I think you will hear 3 beeps, if the memory is gone you should hear 9 beeps.

Machines rebooting during the boot up sequence can mean many different things from a corrupt Windows install to a corrupt File Allocation Table(FAT) to a dying hard disk drive and everything in between. When you boot up the computer and you see writing on your screen, start pressing F5 like a man possessed. This should bring you to a menu screen where you can choose a number of options. Choose the first option, Boot Windows into Safe mode and see what happens. If it still reboots before getting into Windows, you may have a corrupt Windows install that will need to be repaired or reinstalled before it will boot successfully.

To repair a Windows installation, pop your Windows CD into the CD drive and restart your machine and get it to boot up off the CD drive. The Windows install should start off but it will come up and ask if you want to Reinstall Windows, Repair current installation or Quit. Try a Repair first and see what happens - this may fix the problem for you. If a repair doesn't fix the problem, a total reinstall might be your only option, so I hope you don't have any data on the hard drive you want to keep, if you do there still may be ways to get the data off before doing a complete reinstall.

In all honesty, I'm more than happy to come over and have a look at this for you if you aren't confident in following these steps and as some of the others have already suggested, there are a number of places where you can pick up replacements quickly and at reasonable prices. It won't be any trouble for me to pop over and have a look at this for you to help you diagnose the problem. You do more than enough for everyone one else on here, me included, and if I can help in any way, I'm more than happy to do so!

Cheers,

Chris ;-)

[werewolf]

+1 for the USB caddie idea.

Why? Because windows configures itself to boot with certain hardware, so when you try and boot from a hard drive from one PC installed into another, it has a hard time as it can't see the correct hardware!

Using a caddie (or setting the drive as a "slave" or "secondary" (depending on the jumper terminology) allows you to view the drive as data only (not booting from it). Obviously the drive needs to be added to a working system for this to work.

Bad things can happen when the power supply goes, but hopefully the HDD is ok and you can get your data back!

[John]

thanks for the info everyone.

It is a SATA drive, and thats why i havent yet been able to put it in an external caddie as i only have one for IDE.

The data on this harddrive that would be lost is only about 35 emails, everything else is on a backup on another harddrive which is fine. (however i dont really want to spend another 3 long nights installing all the programs again )

Anyway i think what im going to do is get a caddie and then see it the HDD are fine.

I think the PSU smells burnt, and when i plug the power cord into the back normally you would see an LED on the motherboard light up, but now nothing happens. I would just go and buy a new PSU from umart, but dont want to if the motherboard, HDD, ram etc are all stuffed as well. If that was the case it would be better off just buying a new computer.

Shorty i may take you up on that offer of help if i cant seem to get it going in the next day or so. Cheers

[apoklyps60]

first off when you boot the system does it post(the black screen where it shows memory size and usually motherboard make)? secondly is it at the loading windows phase where it blue screens? or does this happen even before it goes to the loading windows screen. is this windows xp? or vista? can you hear the hard drive spin?

[apoklyps60]

also as a good rule of thumb it is always good to store your backup data elsewhere as in a removable drive. and it would make it a whole lot easier to create an image of the hard drive after installing all the applications you want or need on another external usb drive. then if it happens again just reload the image onto a new hard drive. sorry disaster recovery is always a PIA.

[apoklyps60]

also to get into safe mode it is F8. but this point is moot if you cant even go past the post.

[Davo_Dinkum]

i have had 3 computers blow the power supply .everything in them was ok.

new power supply and away they go.

the only one that the mother board died in was 1 that caught fire.lucky i saw a flicker and blew it out as there was 1 1/2 inch flames in the power supply. now the computer still worked ok for another month or so then the mb just stopped working 1 day.no bios beeps or post nothing.

i would grab another power supply plug it in and fire it up .if the mb and ram and cpu etc is ok it should run the post .

can't always just grab a hd plug it into another machine and it will boot up .u think it would but sometimes it's just not that easy.there are a few reasons why this happens.

if it won't boot in another machine set it as slave hook it up .fire it up and run scan disk on it .that should tell u if it ok.if there bad sectors etc it will come up.

can u hook the drive to your pc ?

u say it's sata dose your puter have sata connections?

if not i reckon test the mb in angus's pc with a power supply. if u have a spare lying about .if not i have a test 1 u can grab .just got to connect the connection type.

most power supply's (well could say every)have a slow blow fuse in them .they burn out slowly and make the smell most time.

i would write more stuff but start with the basics .process of elimination. just like a car truck boat bus house etc mechanical electrical process of test and check parts till u find what broken is the best .

[Shrimpo]

I had the same dilemma a couple months back if i bought a new hard drive what if the motherboard and cpu are stuffed aswell, I ended up buying a new pc.

[Dusky]

Yeah I reckon get a new PSU, and boot up and see what happens??

Failing that use an external HD box to access the drive to save the data.

even without a HD drive the computer should be able to boot to a post screen.

Also check that all the memory and graphics cards are in securely, if necessary pull them out and give the contacts a good clean with alcohol and re seat them.

you should atleast be bale to boot through to a screen where you can access the bios to check the health of the CPU.

let us know how ya get on mate??

Cheers.

[Davo_Dinkum]

a rubber and a few asorted paint brushes ,is good for clean too.in the slots with the brush.and rubber card contacts.

[GrantP]

Cheapest way to do it is 'borrow' a know-good machine and swap out parts starting with the PSU, the motherboard, and so on until you can at least access the bios (you should get the option to access bios on startup - "press delete" or and F-key depending on motherboard). That way you can identify the problem without spending any money.

Dhess's suggestion is a good one - you can get a housing to convert your drive to an external drive quite cheaply, but if you've already tried plugging in as another SATA drive in a PC that you know is good, then I suspect the HD could be damaged.

I would be very suprised if anything more than the PSU and motherboard is fried. It's fair to asume that the PSU could have spiked and killed the MB, but unlikely the MB would pass the spike onto the CPU (one of the most expensive components). Unfortunately, the Hard drive is also plugged directly into the PSU, so could also sustain damage. Unlikely, but possible, is that the CD/DVD drive could have been damaged, as that is fed power directly from the PSU also. If you have a decent graphics card that also had a power supply directly from the PSU, then that could have sustained damage too

To ad insult to injury, if the PC is older than 12 months it's unlikely you'll find a new MB that will house the CPU - they change the interface frequently.

If you don't have a machine that you can swap parts from (needs to have similar CPU & Hard Drive - SATA), and you're on a tight budget (asuming you were happy with the performance and don't see a benefit in upgrading), than can I suggest you visit one of the many 'Ex Goverment PC' places around Brisbane to try to find a cheap PC thats of similar spec as a donor?

Hope that helps.

Rgrds

Grant

[John]

Thanks everyone for the help. I went and got a new PSU (Antec 550W) and so took out the old one and put this one in and got it back up and running now.

Thanks again for all the very helpful advice and suggestions. :ta:

[Angus]

I concur.

Thanks everyone.

It sucks when you lose access to your computer and you realise how much you rely on it

Angus

[Davo_Dinkum]

yeps when my computer brakes or the net goes down .i go mad .and it gets fixed or sorted quick.

other than the convince of it.and some of the stuff i do on it.there also the enterainment part of it.i don't really watch tv .and if it do 1/2 the time its on my computer.