Power Supply

[stlgirl]

Title: My major screw up with trying to fix a power supply issue

My parents have an old dell optiplex gxa and they called me telling me that the pc kept going out. So I figured it was the power supply. Now I've installed memory, cd/dvd drives, etc. However I've never installed a power supply. Well I had an old dell optiplex gxa so I figured I would just switch out the power supply from the one to the other. Some now in doing so the system will not boot up. It says...


Primary drive 1 not found
Secondary drive 0 not found
Secondary drive 1 not found

press F1 to continue or F2 to enter set up

well if I hit F1 it says "error in running system

I cannot get it to recognize any drives. At this point I'd been switching cables quite a bit and was losing patience and did something I normally would not do which was not turn the pc of to switch them when. When I went to switch the power plugs on their new dvd writer drive it sparked and well now its not powering up at all. Feeling like quite the dumb @ss now I think I probably shorted out the drive. This all happend when trying to swap things from one tower to the other, I don' know if it was the power cords I did not connect back correctly or the cords to all the drives from the motherboard.

Any thoughts on what I should do to try and fix it. Before I just buy them a new pc which they really should have invested in quite some time ago.

Any help and advice would be appreciated!

[Apoptosis]

sounds like you fried the power supply... I've done the same thing messing with case fans with the PC running and arched a wire on the case frying the power supply. Hope it uses a standard PSU.

[KnightRid]

Try another power supply, and make sure it has enough wattage for the computer.

arched at the drive huh..OUCH..that hurts jsut thinking of all those failures about to happen ;)

If the computer is worth putting $100 into it, fix it - if not tell them to buy a new one. My parents are cheap, so when they have any problems that would cost over $100 to fix in their computers, I tell them to buy a new one - so they have me build one..lol

Mike

arching..ouch..man that still hurts.

[Apoptosis]

I have some older 380W to 420W thermaltakes.... if they will work i'll sell you one for cheap.

[stlgirl]

sounds like you fried the power supply... I've done the same thing messing with case fans with the PC running and arched a wire on the case frying the power supply. Hope it uses a standard PSU.

Apoptosis,

Well the thing is the pc is still powering up. The slower/older sony cd burner drive lights up. So does the floppy and so on. Just not the samsung dvd burner that I sparked when trying to attach the power connector to it. Now the dvd burner does not even light up so I figure I fried the drive... right?

Even with everything powers up no getting it to work is another thing. Thats when it starts saying all the primary and secondary drives are not found. I unplugged some of the wires from the motherboard to the drives, I spent an hour or two switching them around trying to get them working again with no luck. Windows wont even boot. It just gives me the error I mentioned above. So my question is did I really fry the power supply ?Because it the system turns on and off and everything lights up except for the dvd burner.

[stlgirl]

Try another power supply, and make sure it has enough wattage for the computer.

arched at the drive huh..OUCH..that hurts jsut thinking of all those failures about to happen ;)

If the computer is worth putting $100 into it, fix it - if not tell them to buy a new one. My parents are cheap, so when they have any problems that would cost over $100 to fix in their computers, I tell them to buy a new one - so they have me build one..lol

Mike

arching..ouch..man that still hurts.

Yeah very stupid move on my part. All of those failures is what concerns me most. My mother just recently lost her job of 25 years due to down sizing so I hate to ask them to put out money to purchase a new system when the timing is so bad for them.

If I just fried the dvd burner I could also replace it myself. My worry is that I've had to cross some wires hooking all the white wires back up from the mother board. Plus it not even recognizing any drives. When I trying to hit the F1 to continue it says error running system.

So simply put I took a chance thinking I could fix the pc because it was old and I felt some what comfortable taking the lid of the tower of a pc to replace items like memory, drives, etc.

However I had no exeprience replacing a power supply. Plus I only realized that was not necesarry until it was to late.

Thanks Mike for your help.

[stlgirl]

All in all this is what I did.

I took the two towers laid them on their side. The were both Optiplex gxa's. Since I was going to take the power supply from my old optiplex that I was no longer using. I figured I'd also put the extra memory in it and replace their old cd rom drive with the cd burner that was in my pc. That way it had two drives the new dvd burner I just put in their pc last week from newegg and the my old cd burner which had to be faster than their plan old cd rom drive.

So I swithced the memory and the cd drive over first. Then I disconnected the power supply from my Opti gxa and. THen I unhooked the bad power supply from my parents at that time I also unhooked the cords to the drives from the motherboad (Kicks myself for being so stupid).

Then I went about hooking up the power supply. Thought that I had it done. Powered it up and

NO drives found

so then I started swapping cables around but power and white cables.

Then after about an hour or so I did not turn the pc and I switch a power cord going to the new dvd burner thats a week old and spark! turned the pc off....rebooted it all drives light up except dvd burner and still no drives recognized and all I get is a black screen telling me that error running system.

[kenc51]

try leaving the dvd drive unplugged and goto the bios, check if it picks up any of the hard drives....you might just need to set the bios to boot from the correct hard drive!

[Apoptosis]

sounds you got lucky and just fried the DVD-Rom, which can be fixed for $28 shipped (new one from newegg... no taxes, no shipping)! I fried the PSU when I did that one mine! Try what was mentioned above and removing the optical drive from the boot order in the BIOS as it might be freaking the system out!

[KnightRid]

Ok maybe I am a total idiot, but what white wires are you talking about?

remove all the power connectors from ALL the drives, then remove all the cable from the drives and the MB.

Hook an ide cable into the PRIMARY ide port on the motherboard, then hook into the hard drive. Plug the power cable back into the hard drive. Try to boot - if it doesnt work with even just the hard drive hooked up with nothing else, try taking the system back to what it was - remove the extra memory and stuf you put in, then try to boot.

Someoen above mentioned about the BIOS also - in the older systems sometimes you had to manually do all that fun stuff ;) so definitely check that after the rebooting with just the hard drive hooked up if it doesnt recognize it.

Mike

Wish I was closer that I could take a look at it, but some of us have to live in lame states keep us updated on progress.

Also - just thinking out loud here - you might have fried the ide connectors on the motherboard from arching the dvd drive?....just thinking, maybe my brain will answer me if that can happen sometime soon ;)

[stlgirl]

Ok maybe I am a total idiot, but what white wires are you talking about?

remove all the power connectors from ALL the drives, then remove all the cable from the drives and the MB.

Hook an ide cable into the PRIMARY ide port on the motherboard, then hook into the hard drive. Plug the power cable back into the hard drive. Try to boot - if it doesnt work with even just the hard drive hooked up with nothing else, try taking the system back to what it was - remove the extra memory and stuf you put in, then try to boot.

Someoen above mentioned about the BIOS also - in the older systems sometimes you had to manually do all that fun stuff ;) so definitely check that after the rebooting with just the hard drive hooked up if it doesnt recognize it.

Mike

Wish I was closer that I could take a look at it, but some of us have to live in lame states keep us updated on progress.

Also - just thinking out loud here - you might have fried the ide connectors on the motherboard from arching the dvd drive?....just thinking, maybe my brain will answer me if that can happen sometime soon ;)

KnightRid (Mike),

Thanks for your help I am going to try and do exactly as stated above this evening and see if I can get it up and running. Sorry it's taken me so long to reply I've been working a lot of over time lately. I will post the results in the next few days.

Thanks again for your help!

[tomato]

Just a thought, but don't Dell systems require propriartary Dell components? Could that be the source of the issue? IE: installing a non-Dell component?

If not, try KnightRid's advice and start troubleshooting each component as needed... it sucks, but you gotta figure out what's working and what's fried (methinks the dvd burner is toast though )