Oh dear (euphemism) Or dont do this at home

[Graham]

A friend has PROBLEMS.

After fitting a new 300W PSU he had occasional "wont turn ons", after a few tries, or maybe pull the mains, it would eventually work.
Then yesterday it would NOT go at all, so he took the PSU out, opened it and checked for loose wires, he assures me he was gentle, and found nothing obvious, so he put the lot back together.

When he turned it on.......

The DVD opened very fast and sent the DVD still spinning across the room, he checked the HS fan, not turning, little whisp of smoke from unknown location, so he turned it off smartish.

He called me for help (), I suggested he put his original PSU back, still no go.

So, today he brings the whole thing round, and we have a look.
I disconnected everything form the PSU and checked voltages (even though this was a known good one), all OK.
Reconnected PSU and booted, fans run OK, HDD spins up, no smoke but no graphics,
Removed all boards, substitute and old PCI card, reboot graphics OK.
Autodetect on drives slow, then reports C with corrupt name, D, no secondaries at all (CD-RW and DVD).
Reseat his video card, OK, phew.
The DVD smelt of burnt components, so we open it, definate charring, bin job.
CD-RW no response, and wont open, another bin job.
C drive corrupt FAT, W98 boot disk write to it OK, D drive seems OK.
I have put his D on both IDE channels and it seems to work so they are OK.

Dead...

CD-RW
DVD
HDD (C)
PSU

Still OK

HDD (D)
MB
Proc
MEM
Video
Floppy


Unknown

Sound
Scanner SCSI
TV card
HW DVD card.


Right now the question, I am sure I know the answer though, is there anything I can do to recover the HDD FAT, I am assuming that it will reformat OK if not, or do you know better?


A little knowledge is a dangerous thing !!!!

He was a liitle happier when he left, he had expected the bill to be about £1000 (complete system) but he got away with about £200 (CD-RW, DVD, HDD, case with PSU).


G

[Whir]

Is that an AT mobo? Did he hook the power connectors to the board backwards? Yikes!

Have you tried to put the bad drive in another computer and get access to the files?? I don't know if Norton's Disk Doctor will fix FAT tables, but you might check something like that. And physical scan the disk... Who knows...

Good luck with that one!

-Whir

[Jonty]

Norton Disk Doctor should be able to fix the FAT table, if it's fixable that is.

I would be more worried about what caused the problem in the first place. As Whir said, was the PSU connected correctly the second time? It seems strange it worked more or less OK before it was dismantled. If it was new surely it would have been better to get it exchanged.

Can you not try to open the CD-RW through the little hole?

[Graham]

It was not a new machine ('bout a year), but home built, not by me or him, but a supposed professional.
The board is ATX (Asus) with a 1.3G Atlon +256M.

The CD-RW will not respond to a button press, and I have tried the little hole and I can open the draw but it will not show in the BIOS check.
I will have to get Norton DD, I have also DL some diag tools from Seagate, we'll have to see what they say.

I am not too hopeful, and my m8 is resigned to a re-format, but I want to give it my best shot first.

Thanks for the input guys.


G

[mickwish]

G
If you are keen to recover the FAT table there are a number of options if the Seagate Sea Tools doesn't do it. Ontrack has emergency recovery tools for data, and they have an on-line recovery system. Not sure how expensive, but may be worth it if your friend really wants his data.
Another option is software to recover data, like Finaldata. I used this ot recover a HDD I messed up badly, and it worked very well for me. Again, it costs, but it was worth it for me.
Hope this helps
Mick

[DanU]

Just out of curiosity... what brand of PSU was this?

If the data was really important, you can send the HDD to a drive recovery service. They can usually recover data from even severely damaged HD, but it's not cheap.

Hey, this is post 1000 for me! WOO HOO !!!

[mickwish]

Hey, congrats DanU. One more post and you are Ultimate!

Edit: OOH! Wrong nick there!

[dragline]

that's a hard luck story if i ever heard one. sorry to hear it.

i recently got a case off of eBay that supposedly came with a RaidMax 400W power supply. when the case arrived, my friend who was helping me build the computer says "there is no way that's a 400 W power supply" i checked the raidmax site and the serial number they showed matched the one i had, but looked nothing like it....needless to say i got a new one (and did NOT put the cheapo back onto ebay)

so beware, there are knockoff power supplies floating around out there. could that be the case here?

[ocit]

The DVD opened very fast and sent the DVD still spinning across the room

reminds me of predator.

[Graham]

Well (sigh)

The HDD is dead (no spin) although it did, once, report the drive name corrupted, it is still under warranty.

He ordered new HDD, CD-RW, DVD and case, so I put it together (just MB Vid new HDD and CD-RW), load Win98se, and VIA 4-1, all OK.

Insert sound card, no post, try WinTV card, same, Hollywood DVD, same, oh ****!!

I tried a PCI video card, OK, lan card OK, and his SCSI scanner adaptor OK, so it looks as if his PCI cards took the hit too, still he can be thankfull for small mercies, the MB CPU amd memory are OK.

At least I think so!!

Anyone got an ideas?

G