Help Badly Needed!!!

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Davis Goertzen

New Member
On Monday I was experimenting with some spare HDDs I have, plugging them into the cables for my CD-RW/DVD-RW drive, as my computer does not have cables for more than one HDD, one floppy drive, and one CD drive. All was going well until I foolishly plugged in the power cable to the spare HDD while the computer was going; in hindsight, that was not a wise plan at all. There were a few sparks, and my computer immediately shut down.

Now, when I press the power button on my computer, sometimes it won’t go farther than the starting screen, which displays the manufacturer’s logo; or, if I don’t press a key, a black screen with a blinking white undersore in the upper left corner appears. So far, neither pressing F8 has nor entering Setup (pressing F10 has helped me at all. When I press F12, I choose the “IBA 4.0.22 Slot 0240” option, and from there the following lines appear:
Intel (R) Boot Agent Version 4.0.22
Copyright (C) 1997-2001, Intel Corporation
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-MOF: Exiting Intel PXE ROM

Sometimes the following line also appears “1962: No operating system found. Press F1 to repeat boot sequence.”

In short, I can’t get my computer to start and be the helpful, useful machine it used to be. My computer is an old IBM NetVista 6790 DRU, Pentium 4 1.6Ghz, with Windows 2000 Pro, Service Pack 5. Please help! I don’t know what to do and have pretty well exhausted my imagination. Thanks.

Davis Goertzen

NOTE: I'm not sure if this subdivision is the correct place for a question like this; it was the closest I saw.
 
Sounds like you may have toasted the supply a little. When you first power on any system the pull for power is the greatest. If your mishap strained a cap in the supply you may be looking for a replacement there since this is on an older system. Hopefully you didn't manage to damage anything else like the board. Ouch! Those 160w supplies are small.
 
Chake Jumper Settings

May be your HDD is not Detecting.

1> Press "F1" key with system startup, than press "Enter" key to chake that your HDD is detacting or not.

2> If not then Chake "Jumper" Settings of your HDD.

3> Make your main HDD which loaded OS on it as a "Master".

4> Spare HDD as a "Slave"

:)
 
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I'm going with PC Eye here, you probably toasted either the PSU, the HDD or both. If you've got another drive laying around, see if that one will boot up, but if all you're getting is the mobo screen and then nothing, I'm guessing that the drive got fried (or the BIOS on the drive itself). As I'm sure you've realized now, don't ever do any work inside your computer without first disconnecting all the power connections, I usually disconnect everything just to be sure.
 
After unplugging the ac cord I usually throw the breaker switch back on and hit the power button to discharge the caps in the supply and the board itself. With no builtup charges you won't fry anything with a discharge either. It's likely the little card in the drive is now toast. I've also seen caps go "Kaaa... BOOM"! when testing equipment due to internal shorts and defects in materials. Caution is always adivised!
 
Okay, thanks everyone. I don't think the HDD is fried, because on Monday night I was able to get it going; I left the computer on all night, checking the HDD, and it worked for that. It worked for a little while yesterday morning too, but when I tried to compress some files to back them up on disks, the computer locked up, and I had to shut it down manually. Since then I haven't got it going. So, I was able to get it going after described incident; which I hope means the HDD may not be fried after all? I certainly hope so.

I'll try a new power supply and see if that works. Thanks for all the input.

Davis Goertzen
 
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You boot into safe mode by pressing F8, right? I have tried that and it didn't work. I swapped the IDE leads between the HDD and the CD drive and it didn't make any difference.

Davis
 
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If you didn't cook the card on the drive itself the amperage may have gone through and heated the ide cable itself. Besides rearranging the drives on the same cable have you tried a different cable? The immediate lock when going to backup files suggests the drive is ok when idle but sees a problem when trying to use it. That's when the signals are sent to the card on the drive that may be shorting to ground now.

The one thing to do now before buying another supply is to unplug the effected drive to see if there are any other problems seen. That would point at damage that went further then first thought. You are going to have to take everything one step at a time to find out just what was effected when that happened.
 
Yes, the cable I'm using now is a different one than when the original incident took place. Also, I have tried replacing the hard drive with a different one, and it does the same thing. My computer recognizes either drive when I go to setup; which makes me think it might be a board problem?

BTW, on my machine the HDD and CD drive are already on different cables. Thanks to an ad I placed (some time ago) in our local Bargain Hunter, I should be getting some old machines without OS's for free sometime this week. I'll try my old HDD in one of them. Thanks for all the help.

Davis
 
Just remember never to try connecting any drives while the system is live or... :eek: !!! again! The only thing that allows a live plugin is generally a usb device being plugged into a port or headphones into an audio jack on the front of the case due to the low current levels there.
 
No worries!!! I have thoroughly learned my lesson: absolutely zero messing around with the insides when the power is connected!

Actually, I don't have the above-mentioned used towers computers yet; I'll pick them up tomorrow. I received a few CDs that look like they have various Windows OS's on them; I'll pop that on the oldies I get, pop my HDD in the oldies, and see what happens. More later!!

Thanks to one and all for helping me on this and giving me a glimmer of hope that all my stuff actually may not be lost after all.

Davis Goertzen
 
Well just don't practice plugging 12v power plugs in while there is live current with a system up and running or you may see more of the wrong thing. Those have the highest output coming from the supply as a rule where you could see something else get zzzzzzzzzzapped...:eek: ! and cook on you!
 
No, Honestly, I think I may be going through a costly lesson; I am NEVER going to fool around with the insides of a running computer again. I got some of the said CPUs, they have Windows 98 (SE, I think), and I'd honestly like to know if you think it's advisable to try slaving my old HDD in one of the machines. I don't really know what to do.

Davis
 
If you are currently running an ATA100 drive and added an ATA66 both drives will then run at the ATA66 speed. The slower drive will drag on the host. For an even older ATA33 drive you would slave that to the cd or dvd drive you currently have on the secondary ide cable. Those would run at the same speed there. If your other drive is ATA100 no problem! You may have to reformat it after saving any files if it is Fat32 and not NTFS however.
 
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