Computer turns on and off when hard drive is connected

[troggsfc]

Hi,

I built a pc for a friend using various bits of old pc's... Its a p4 1.5ghz 512ram with a 40gig hard drive which i had running absolutely fine for 6months in my pc as a second drive.

I got the pc set up and running and it was fine for 2 days used quite a bit playing games etc. Then on the third day we had trouble turning it on, it just wouldn't come on then after switching the rear switch on and off it would eventually come on. Problem with the switch i thought, no major hassle if it eventually comes on.

But then this morning it wouldn't turn on at all and when we did get it to, it turned back off after 3 seconds, with no beeps so nothing obvious. I did a bit of research, disconnected everything and found out that it works with everything connected, ram, graphics card drives etc, apart from the 40gig hard drive. With it disconnected the computer boots to bios, when its connected it turns off after 3 seconds, then you have to reset the power supply by turning its switch off on the rear.

So I am guessing I have answered my own support question that there is a problem with the hard drive, but what would it be?? it was working fine the day before!! Will a new hard just fit it and work or could the system be shorting the drive or something?

I am going to try a new drive and have ordered one, but i'd like to know what went wrong and if there is anything i can try first with the current drive which has some data i'd like to get back!

Thanks for any advice

[troggsfc]

Also to add the power supply fan runs when you turn it on, then when you hit the front switch, it powers up the other fans, and everything then switches off so that would rule out the power supply i guess..

[Nude_Lewd_Man]

Hi, and WELCOME TO TECHIMO..!

The first thing I would check, given what you have said above, would be to see what happens when you take the HDD from your computer and attach it onto this one.

If the computer boots (and loads) without any issues, then it sounds like it really is the drive - although there are some other reasons it wouldn't work...

Another thing you could try would be to load it back into your computer (as a slave again) and see what your computer thinks of it. Personally, and if it is accessable from your OS, I would also do a checkdisk on it too, with the /fix command.


Let us know how it goes....!

[troggsfc]

Main problem with this issue is the computer is up in blackpool with my mate and i'm down in kent! ...

Have posted my friend up a new hard drive which was working absolutely fine on my pc. When this new hard drive is installed, the same thing happens even quicker than before it turns off within seconds of turning on.

However if you unplug the power cable to the hard drive, the computer boots up to the bios and says 'boot failure - reboot and select boot device etc..' ...So the rest of the PC seems to be working fine without the hard drvie connected.

Interestingly if you unplug the IDE cable but not the power cable to the hard drive it still causes the machine to turn off. Have tried all available power cables to no avail.

Anybody got any ideas what this could be and what I need to test for next??

Cheers.