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It powers on but doesn't

K

Kekewy

Member
My friend's computer is acting strange. I think it may have a hard drive issue, but I'm not 100% sure. When she turns off her computer, then turns it back on again it starts to boot up. All the fans will spin and the lights light up, and looks like it's going to boot properly, but the hard drive doesn't load. She has an IDE drive plugged into a sata converter.
It only does this when the computer is manually turned off and turned right back on. If she selects the restart option in windows it boots fine, if she leaves it off overnight it boots fine. The drive itself is having some odd issues, running slow and such. I know it's not an over heating issue, because it did it even when she switched to another, though older drive. Could it be the converter? A bad drive? Or something else entirely.
 
Are you seeing the post screen? What is the error when it fails. If you are able to get into the bios does the drive show up?
 
Theres no post or BIOS screen. The monitor doesn't display anything at all. I gave her a diagnostic program to run on the drive to see if it's working okay. I've yet to hear the results of the scan. She's on dial up, so the download wasn't finished when she went to bed.
 
if it can't post, it's not a hard drive problem.

happens to me a lot cuz my psu sux. what i did that fixes the problem every time is to unplug the power cord or turn off the power supply completely, then hold "on" button for 30s, then plug everything back and it should boot now.

if it doesn't usually you are likely to have a problem with ur psu, if it can't supply enough power to ur components (ie graphics card) then the system won't post.
 
Power supply, BIOS or hard drive. The PATA to SATA converter doesn't help either. If you're sure everything was working perfectly before than this occured especially more often and regularly over time then I'd also lean toward PS. I also would try to jot down or remember the BIOS settings and do a reset to default, exit, turn off, then re-enter the original settings. Modern OSs can and do communicate with your BIOS.

If you were to test the hard drive, which isn't a bad idea regardless if it is the issue, test it in a system that natively supports PATA if you can. And only do the short basic SMART and quick scan tests. Don't need the long surface scan.

Best of lucky troubleshooting.
 
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