[TroggsFC]

Hi, I built a PC for a friend and we had it running for a few days at his in Blackpool. I am now down in Kent which makes this hard to fix!!

Like I say, It was running fine for a few days, then we had some trouble turning it on. Managed to get it on once so that was fine, thought it was a problem with the switch. However the next day when it turned on it would fire up the fans and then turn off after a few seconds.

After removing everything and systematically re-attaching I found the problem to be the hard drive. With the hard drive connected the PC turns on then off, with the power cable to the hard drive removed the PC boots to bios and displays error: 'connect boot media... etc.' No crash without the hard drive connected to power so must be something to do with that!

When you remove just the IDE cable and leave the power cable in the hard drive it still causes a crash- so I'm thinking a power problem??

I sent him up a new hard drive, fully tested on my machine. He put this into the PC with great hope, but it still turns off just after you turn it on, he says even quicker than before.

Any body got any ideas as to the problem or what I should check next?

Thanks for any help!

George

 

[raptor_pa]

Power Supply perhaps? What is the make and model of the drive?

 

[TroggsFC]

Hi, Both drives tested were Maxtor drives, both work fine on My own PC, one is a 40GB one is an 80GB -Maxtor 6Y080L0 is the 80gig.

I would have thought power supply - but when there is no power running to the hard drive, the PC boots fine... does that add up?

 

[raptor_pa]

Yeah, the spin up load of the drive isn't pulling current.... If the drives run OK in another PC, then it obviously isn't the drives, the drive could just be putting the PS over it's max current... what is the PSU in the machine?

 

[TroggsFC]

Hi, Original Machine was a Packard Bell I Media 5106 see:

http://support.packardbell.com/uk/item/?m=home&pn=p480402601

So Original Spec was:

Cosmos (GA8IDMNF) Rev 1.0 µATX motherboard
Leadtek Geforce 2 MX400 (NV11) 64 MB
CDRW Philips CDD4851
DVD 16X Pioneer 117BB
256MB Ram
64MB Nvidia Graphics
40gb hard disk
Hiper HPU-3S-350 - D-0507168777
Which is 350W

I added in an extra 256mb ram, GeForce FX 5200 256MB graphics cards replacing the old 64mb one. Also the hard drive added was a Maxtor 80GB-6Y080L0.

Obviously I've upgraded a few components which might have made the PSU fail... should I therefore go for a 400W one?? I was thinking of trying something like this one (generic 400W cheap unit)

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/119582