Skydive420

Hi everyone. I have a problem with my desktop computer. I know a little bit about computers but not enough to fix problems like the one I'm encountering.

I have a custom built desktop which I purchased about 4 years ago. It has an Asus-A8NE motherboard, AMD dual core 4200, 2 GB RAM, 550w power supply, 300GB SATA hard drive, and I also own an 80GB western digital external HD.

Long story short, I shut my computer down as normal one night. The next day I go to turn it on and NOTHING. No fans, no power, no nothing. The only thing I was able to see was 1 small round green light that was on, on the motherboard.

Right now I am using my girlfriends laptop to type all of this. I want to know #1-What is wrong with my computer and can I fix it? and then #2- If not, can I salvage my hard drive at least since that's what is important. I don't want to go spending tons of money on a new system. If I can at least save the HD, I'd feel like I got my use out of the computer. I just ordered a pretty basic laptop in hopes that maybe I can transfer my desktop HD data to external HD and then to laptop.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

raptor_pa

If the drive wasn't the failure point then yes you should be able to attach as an external and copy the data over. You may have to take ownership of the drive on the new installation of Windows, but we can cross that bridge if needed...

ahmorrow

It sounds like the motherboard, ram, or processor. Since RAM is the easiest I'd start there. Replace it with known good RAM. After that, I'd honestly just rip the HDD and pull the info.

I doubt it's the HDD, but it could be. I had a computer that boot cycled because the HDD was shorting out... no clue how it did it though.

Skydive420

The only thing I ever added myself was a stick of RAM. However, I've had that stick of RAM in there for months and months with no problems. I took the stick out and tried to start the computer but no luck. The fact that the little green light on the motherboard is on tells me that it probably isn't a power supply issue. The people who built my computer didn't seem to know too much about what they were doing because they had to go through about 3 or 4 motherboards until they found one that worked with my setup. For the first few years I had lots of bugs that I had to fix myself with Spybot S&D, Ad-Aware SE, antivirus software, etc. but everything has been fine for a long time. There is only 1 other issue I could think of that caused the crash...my video card, Nvidia x850 series XT PE. Everytime I've tried to play a game such as Battlefield 2 or Oblivion, I would hear a constant BEEP every few seconds and the intervals between beeps would get less the longer I tried playing the game until the game crashed/computer crashed. The simple answer was to just not play any games so I basically just used my desktop for browsing, email, and holding music/documents.

First thing is first. How would I transfer my HDD to the external HD when I can't get power to the HDD (desktop won't start up)? Thanks a lot for your all your help guys. I appreciate it.

raptor_pa

Will the PC power up and post with the HD disconnected? Sounds like the issue is probably power supply - the LED on he MOBO might light off the 5VDC rail but one of the 12VDC rails might be having problems. A high resistance short on one of hte peripherals ( Video card, another card, HD, optical drive - etc ) could throw enough load on the rail to pull current too low to start. Pull power to the drives one at a time and see if the machne will start, if you can lay your hands on a generic low end video card for teting, try that in place of your current vid card - try to isolate if it is a component failure. Also if you can check the voltage on the power supply 12 volt rail with a Volt-ohm-meter (digital multi-meter) when the machine is powered on. Check at a spare drive conector, yellow - black should read 12VDC red-black 5VDC ( or real close to it )