Computer quit on me :(

[jamoe19]

Ok here is the situation: while playing Doom 3 my computer just stop working.... It didn't
shut down because the cpu fan was still spinning and the power light on the front was still
on. The weird thing is the the light for the hard disk was on... not flashing or anything
just on. I took out the hard disk and installed it on this computer as a secondary
slave to the cdrw and I can access it with no problem.

I also removed:All drives, Ram, Video Card, all PCI cards, replaced cpu with previous one, floppy, and cdrw and the situation is the same - Computer doesn't post, just the keyboard lights blink as normal and the power and harddrive lights comes on then nothing... zip... notha.. Only the light to the hard drive stays on.
I hooked up a pci diagnostic card and the code it shows is FF.

I have a P4 2.8e
PM9MS MB (latest Award BIOS)
X850xt agp
1.5gb ddr400
450watt Max Power ps
Diamond extreme sound card

The only thing I've done is change the AGP aperture (sp) from 256 to 1g in the bios, and
even then the computer worked for awhile before it stopped working.

Please help me out here guys, my gaming rig is in pieces and I have a slew of new games I want to play.

 

[anjulpa]

I'd check the power supply if I were you. Something similar happened to me sometime back and it was the smps that had died.

 

[jamoe19]

Yah I have a few pcs around here, I'll just take out one of those and see. Thanx!

 

[ValJP]

Turn it on and lights and fans come on but no beeps, no video?

bad power connection I think or faulty wiring, or cracked/damaged motherboard....

Unhook/rehook all your connections if possible and blow dust out of case.
Try again.
Try another power supply...
After that... I'd guess motherboard, but not sure.

I've had symptoms where a customer didn't hook up the 4pin connector from the newer power supplys on newer motherboards that comes with the 20pin normal power connector..
The computer wouldnt beep or post, but would spin fans and run lights...
Plugged in the 4pin for him.. and worked fine.

So sounds like a connection between motherboard and power supply.. so check.. wiring, powersupply, motherboard

 

[jamoe19]

Thanx fellas I checked out the power supply at the P1 connector and at several molex connectors with a multi-meter and volts read 11.48 so there is no problem with the power supply...

As I said before I swapped in a known good cpu so that is not the problem either.. so maybe i'm heading
to FRY's for another MB. What do you guys think?

 

[anjulpa]

Sometimes power supplies can't take enough load. I overheard my local computer builder say this once... but in that case the fans start and die. See if you can swap another power supply for a change and try with it too.

Try cleaning everything before you get a new motherboard. Are you under warranty?

 

[jamoe19]

Nah I'm not under warranty, I got it about 6 months ago as a barebones system with a celeron 2ghz from a discount computer store with only a 30 day warranty. Well I wanted a better board anyway so I got the Asus p4p800se board. ... no use of wasting my ATI graphics card and p4.

Thanx guys!

 

[jamoe19]

Thanx guys, it turns out that it was the PSU. The old one only had 10amps on a single 12v.
I went to fry's and got a 400w SmartPower with dual 12v, 14amps on 12v1 and 15amps on 12v2.

Now I have another issue, Windows xp won't boot.... I get the opening screen where the windows
logo comes on then I get a blue screen with a stop error saying check for viruses, hard disk config,
run chkdsk /f etc. What the heck is this about????

 

[KarenMarie]

To run CHKDSK to check for disk errors


1. On the Windows taskbar, click Start > Run.
2. In the Open box, type the following: cmd
3. Click OK.
4. At the command prompt, type the drive letter of the drive you want to check (followed by a colon), and then press Enter.
(For example, to check drive D, type the following: d: )
5. Change to the root directory of the drive by typing the following and pressing Enter: cd
6. Type the following, and then press Enter: chkdsk /<switch> where <switch> is one of the following:
* If you want to automatically repair file system errors, use the /f switch (for example, chkdsk /f).
* If you want to both repair file system errors and scan for and recover bad sectors, use the /r switch (for example, chkdsk /r).
If you do not specify a switch when running CHKDSK, any errors that are found will not be fixed.
7. If you are prompted to schedule CHKDSK to run the next time the computer restarts (because CHKDSK may be unable to gain exclusive access to the drive under Windows), type the following, and then press Enter: y
8. At the command prompt, type the following, and then press Enter: exit


you can do this from boot disk at the command prompt.

 

[jamoe19]

Thanx Karen. I think I'm screwed because I didn't make a windows xp boot disk on install... I knew one day that
would come back and bite me in the unowut.

 

[KarenMarie]

http://www.bootdisk.com/

 

[jamoe19]

You my lady is the bomb!!!! Thanx

 

[KarenMarie]

you are very welcome.

 

[jamoe19]

Ok I got the boot disk installed on a floppy disk, now it is telling me that windows can't boot because of a missing
or corrupt ( system32\ hal.dll )and to reinstall that file?????? If it's not one thing it's another.

 

[mountcarlmore]

hmm, it seems windows is just corrupt. it happened because it was paging to the hard drive when you turned it off initially. theres no way to reinstall hal.dll, you just need to do a reformat, and reinstall. hal.dll is an image of your hardware, and it can only be created during a windows installation. you could still back up your files if you have another computer, or just try to reinstall windows, but i wouldnt try it as the file allocation tables are probably screwed up as well, since when that happened to me, next time i tried to install linux, it just kept quitting the setup with file system errors.
long story short, i would back everything up and do a fresh format.

 

[jamoe19]

Oohh man dang... luckly I do have another computer i can install the disk into and back up on one of the disks.
thanx