PC Won't Boot, Possibly Bad SATA Cables?

S

shaX 07

New Member
I have an HP Media Center M8430F desktop PC and after I moved the PC wouldn't boot up.. It turns on, but the OS doesn't boot and the monitor says "No Input". I checked all the connections and everything is hooked up properly (I'm a network administrator by profession).

Last night I decided to take the Hard drive out and stand it vertically and see if gravity would allow the SATA cables to stay in place better and it actually booted up and worked fine all night. I put the HD back in just now and it's back to not booting up.

The SATA cables for the HD and the DVD drive are both very loose and don't stay in well at all. The Power cables are the same way, they fall out with the slightest touch and i'm almost positive this is the problem..

If anyone has any other theories please feel free to chime in. I've order some new SATA cables and they should be here tomorrow.

The only thing i'm worried about is if it is the power cables, how can I replace those without replacing the power supply? Aren't they wired into the supply?
 
Cables do occasionally go bad - from what you described, it sounds that way in your case. As for the power feeds, yes they are part of the PSU, but you can buy molex-to-SATA adapters to solve that issue if needed.
 
Try the HDD in another computer if you have one, or a friends computer. It does indeed sound like you have some old cables.

You have a HP computer, so a new power supply would help. whether it is a HP design or standard Micro-ATX you'll have to find out.
 
That wouldn't be a Western Digital hard drive would it? I remember a little ways back that they had a drive that you had to get a special connector from them to connect the data and the power leads so that they would stay connected.
 
It's definitely not the SATA cables, I replaced the, both with a higher quality cable that locks into place and it still won't boot.

My guess is it's the power cable for the hard drive. The hard drive as a SATA Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 750GB.
 
imsati said:
You don't. Easier and cheaper to get a new MB or Drive.

Edit: *if* it comes down to that.
Click to expand...

Damn, lets hope that it doesn't. I'll post back up once my power cables arrive and that either works or gets ruled out as the problem. Thanks for all the help so far.
 
bad SATA cables could be the issue... a few months ago I have having the same issue. Sometimes the computer would hang on the Bio's load screen, and then sometimes it wouldnt pass that but wouldnt boot to windows at all. When i would get into windows on the rare occasion everything would be sluggish and when I would try to click my DVD-RW Drive i would get a error.. I changed out the SATA cable and everything went back to normal. Try trouble shooting the cables. It worked for me
 
My god, threads like these are physically painful to read. So many people contributing, but everyone is so far off (even a mod!).

I can tell you absolutely and definitively that your problem has nothing to do with Sata cables or even your hard drive at all. You could turn the computer on, and even if your hard drive was completely fried, or not connected at all, you wouldn't ever see "no input" from your monitor.

Now, depending on what exactly is happening, it could be a few different things. Do you see the POST screen (looks something like this) before you see the "no input", or do you see "no input" just as soon as you turn on the computer?

If you're seeing it right away, then you're looking at some sort of hardware failure, or something not attached correctly, but definitely not the hard drive power or data cables. In fact, in this case the problem could be pretty much any component except the hard drive and optical drives, because these are the only components non-essential for showing POST. While it is remotely possible that these could be malfunctioning in a way that would interfere with the computer posting, a simple test would be to disconnect the optical and hard drives completely, and then turn it on. If it's still not POSTing, then it's a different component.

However, if you are seeing the POST screen before hand, then the problem will be significantly easier to narrow down. The first thing I would recommend is trying to boot into safe mode. IF you boot successfully, then you're looking at some sort of driver conflict with your graphics adapter... the best course of action would be to simply reinstall the drivers and see how that works.

If you still get "no input" when trying to boot to safe mode, then it's likely some sort of GPU hardware failure. If you're using a graphics card and you're computer has onboard video, simply switch to the onboard and try booting from there. If there is no onboard, or if you're currently using on board, try a different graphics card.

Hope this helps, and let me know which of these scenarios is the one that applies to you, and what happens when you take these steps.
 
PohTayToez said:
My god, threads like these are physically painful to read. So many people contributing, but everyone is so far off (even a mod!).
Click to expand...

I never said it was the hard drive that was causing the issue. He stated he had problems keeping the sata data and power plugs tight on the hard drive. And all I stated was that I remembered at one time western digital had a drive out that require their own special connector.

I build and troubleshoot computers, I know it wasn't the hard drive that was causing the no input issue. You don't even have to have a hard drive connected to see the post screen. Could be video card, ram, motherboard, anything but the hdd.

So I'm not gonna take offense from your post but my post was more generated toward the loose sata cables, not the no input issue.
 
Fair enough, but then why didn't you say anything about that? I mean, it's clear that the thread was going in a direction that wouldn't ever solve the core problem, so why contribute to that rather than steer it in the right direction?
 
johnb35 said:
So I'm not gonna take offense from your post but my post was more generated toward the loose sata cables, not the no input issue.
Click to expand...

^ What he said.

One mention of 'no input' in the first line of the OP, then the rest of the Post was specifically talking about the HDD. Yeesh.
 
PohTayToez said:
My god, threads like these are physically painful to read. So many people contributing, but everyone is so far off (even a mod!).

I can tell you absolutely and definitively that your problem has nothing to do with Sata cables or even your hard drive at all. You could turn the computer on, and even if your hard drive was completely fried, or not connected at all, you wouldn't ever see "no input" from your monitor.

Now, depending on what exactly is happening, it could be a few different things. Do you see the POST screen (looks something like this) before you see the "no input", or do you see "no input" just as soon as you turn on the computer?

If you're seeing it right away, then you're looking at some sort of hardware failure, or something not attached correctly, but definitely not the hard drive power or data cables. In fact, in this case the problem could be pretty much any component except the hard drive and optical drives, because these are the only components non-essential for showing POST. While it is remotely possible that these could be malfunctioning in a way that would interfere with the computer posting, a simple test would be to disconnect the optical and hard drives completely, and then turn it on. If it's still not POSTing, then it's a different component.

However, if you are seeing the POST screen before hand, then the problem will be significantly easier to narrow down. The first thing I would recommend is trying to boot into safe mode. IF you boot successfully, then you're looking at some sort of driver conflict with your graphics adapter... the best course of action would be to simply reinstall the drivers and see how that works.

If you still get "no input" when trying to boot to safe mode, then it's likely some sort of GPU hardware failure. If you're using a graphics card and you're computer has onboard video, simply switch to the onboard and try booting from there. If there is no onboard, or if you're currently using on board, try a different graphics card.

Hope this helps, and let me know which of these scenarios is the one that applies to you, and what happens when you take these steps.
Click to expand...


When I turn the PC on, I do NOT see a post screen, it immediately goes to NO INPUT. I haven't attempted to boot to safe mode yet but I can try it. What's weird is that even though the PC turns on and there's simply "NO INPUT" on the monitor, you can tell that Windows isn't booting just by listening to the hard drive. Once turned on, all you hear is the fans running, you don't hear or see blinking lights that would inform you that the PC is actually booting up.

Another strange thing that happened the last time I actually got the PC to boot was that I had it up and running and working fine, and I had spun slightly in my chair and kicked the tower accidentially (not even very hard, more of a nudge) and it went black on me and didn't end up booting after that (hence why I thought it was cable related).
 
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