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I need your help

narzy

Elite Member
ok some student at school decided it would be funny if they switched the voltage switch on the back of the powersupply wile the computer was turned on, the computers still boot and run however things seem not to be working (go figure) is there a program that will probe through the system and report damaged components? what type of damage may have taken place?

thanks,

narzy
 
I was thinking sysoft sandra, because the HD and ram seem to be working just fine, we need to find out the extent of the computers damage in its entirety if we can. we think the network cards are shot but thats all we can determain as of yet. Ill get those test programs that you recomended however to test the computer just to make sure everything is OK with the ram and HD.

any other suggestions would be greatly apreciated.

narzy
 
Some of the damage will be things dead.

Sheesh, the MTV generation strikes again. There are several
things which come to mind, that will fail sooner with
time. One is the power supply. Since PC power
supplies are switching supplies, the secondary
regulators may have kept the higher voltages off of
the motherboards. Unfortunately, the electrolytic
capacitors within the power supplies are probably
stressed a little, depending on the supplies, as
some will shut down to protect themselves (if this is the
case, everything is fine). Otherwise, some of
the electrolytics may have produced a gas within the
capacitors and popped the seals. Many of todays
electrolytics have a thinner area on their seal (on the
bottom, looks like a dimple, usually there are two of them).
This failure can be detected with nothing more than your
nose. It is a very distinctive smell. Turn the PC off
for a bit, and just sniff the rear fan area. If the seal
was weakened, over time you will see random crashes, reboots,
corrupted hard drives, and the like, as the electrolytics
dry out and the voltage ripple increases. You can always
use an oscilloscope and look at the voltages comming from
the case power supply.

Some of the power supplies are made better these days, and
if it has the proper circuitry inside to protect itself,
you don't have anything to worry about. If you find a few
blown boards, CPUs, RAM, and such, it would probably be a
good idea to change out the case power supply at the same
time, as you don't have one of the better supplies.

Hey, a word of advice. Take some epoxy, liquid nails, or simular
material and fill the hole where the little red slide switch is.

Oh, and if any moron wants to flame me, flipping that switch
does not cause the output voltages to automatically double.
 
besides, if he switches it to 220, wouldn't the voltage out be reduced further because the PSU tries to cut the voltage more?

I would think very little would be damaged. Just that when switched the voltager to the board and periferals would be 1/2 of what it should be?
 
besides, if he switches it to 220, wouldn't the voltage out be reduced further because the PSU tries to cut the voltage more?

I would think very little would be damaged. Just that when switched the voltager to the board and periferals would be 1/2 of what it should be?
 
Most of the time computers will refuse to even turn on because the psu is expecting to receive 220v from the wall. and since it doesn't, it does not have enough power to turn on the system....the computer should work fine by switching back to 110v...doing this while the computer is on, is not different from pulling the plug on the system...So the damage if any would be the same....I.E. crashed HDD, Shorted out motherboard, Blown power supply....If the computer is working now then probably there is nothing wrong with the system.....



MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooo.........

🙂
 
what I am worried about is why the network cards are failing to work, that means somthining happened after the power got PAST the power supply, if that is the case I want to make sure everthing is OK, good suggestion with switching the power supply's Ill call dell and see what they reccomend.
 
ok to prevent this from happening again some one suggested epoxy, however I was concerned with the drippage factor of this solution so I went a thinking, and came up with HOT GLUE, would there be any problem with useing hot glue? its cheap and in abundant supply.
 
hot glue might get melty on the back of a power supply

epoxy won't drip much after it sets. hardly move at all. 5 minute epoxy only takes 5 min for that, so the computer isn't out of action long.
 
SpaceWalker and Possesed Freak are absolutely right, I was
on cold medicine last night.

The power good signal should have prevented the motherboard
from "turning on", but on el crapo supplies you can find
noting more than a resistor within the supply. It is
not supposed to say it is good until all the output
supplies are up and within tolerance.

Although I have seen a supply damaged by being in the
220V position...popped one of the MOSFETs inside, and
yes, the supply was unpluged when it was switched back.
The supply emitted a squeeling noise since the low side
MOSFET was shorted, as it dumped more current, ("tried harder&quot😉
to bring up the power.
 
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