PC Turns off and stays off...

[Agent_Embryo]

My brother hauled his computer up here beacause it wouldn't load XP. I reinstalled the OS, but it turns off and won't come on again. The first time it did it I unplugged the harddrive, and then it came on again. Now it did it again. The harddrive is making very bad noises...I'm thinking it's the harddrive that's bad, but can that cause these dropouts like that? With the computer turning off and not coming on again when pressing power button...

Anyway...I just turned the PSU off for a while and turned it on again, and now it's working again...

What can cause this? Bad Harddrive? Bad PSU? Bad RAM?

[rpertusio]

First thing... is to back up the data on that hard drive! It would appear it is at the end of its life!

It is definitely possible that the drive is 'shorting' internally (or somewhere else) and causing the system to not boot. I have seen the same with a CD drive... permanently unplugging the CD drive would allow the computer to boot. It was 'hit or miss' booting when the drive was plugged in (power connector). Turning off the PSU (with the switch) stopped the current from flowing.

I'm not claiming that IS the cause of your problem, but it might be worth looking into.

- rp

[Agent_Embryo]

I'm going to try it with a harddrive I know works tomorrow. See if that is the problem.

[MDS]

sounds like the click of death on the way It is probably drawling to much current and kicking out the thermal protector in the power supply. After it cools back down or some reset by removing power from the supply it would work again till it kicked the thermal again. If you had a knoppix cd you could remove the hard drive and boot into knoppix from cdrom and if the system doesn't shut down then you have your culprit

[miriam]

Humming and grinding during bootup are noises you should expect. If you hear sounds from your hard disk when it's not reading or writing data, it's time to get concerned. The most common sounds are a low rumble or rattling, grinding sound. Either one suggests that the hard drive bearings or motor may be wearing out. If you hear a sound like this, nothing you can do to fix the problem. However, you can guard against disaster: back up up your data at least once a day

[Agent_Embryo]

I do have a Knoppix CD, I'm going to try it with that...

[Agent_Embryo]

Knoppix ran for a long time, but the computer just died again. I'm not very happy now.

[paul9]

try swapping psu between your system and his. give them a soak test and see what happens.