How screwed is my PC now??

[beason]

your gonna make a U shape with the paperclip and put one end in the gleen wire and the other in the second black wire

HAHA!! found a picture!!

edit: they went to the third black wire. I've always went to the second. i would go with the second...

 

[Lessen]

i just realised i can still browse from my ps3. thatt phone was getting annoying. anyways, with the clip installed and the pc plugged in itdefinately sounded on and that green light stayed on steady. no fans ran though. i also noticed when i unplugged it afterwards that it emitted a beep similar to what it does when i shut it down. it did not do that before.

 

[Webbage]

FWIW It doesn't *really* matter what black wire you short the green line to they are all ground lines. I've used any one of 4 or 5 and it works

If you unplugged the PSU connector from the motherboard and jumped that and all the fans and hard drive and stuff spun up then you have one of a few problems.

- The motherboard is screwed, in which case it's not even trying to turn on.
- The PSU has dropped a voltage line. You can only really test by jumping it wit hthe green wire trick you just used that using a volt meter to check apll the red and yellow wires against ground you should have +5v, +12V and -12V although I don't know off my head which is from which wire. If the fans work that means you've got +12V somewhere. If the hard disk spins up that means your Molex (hard drive power) lines have +12V and +5V. Might be worth chasing down the wiring diagram for a ATX power header and the pinout.
- The power switch is broken or unplugged. We had a machine at work that wouldn't turn on 2 times in 5 and the plastic had broken behind the switch and the whole thing moved back when you hit it.

Should give you something to go on.

 

[beason]

ok so things turned on. your processor fan probably didnt spin because it is powered by the board but your power supply fan and hard drives should have turned on.

the next thing i can think of would be the power button. you can bypass it pretty easy to. again unplug the machine and trace the wires from the switch to the board it should be two wires that have a small plug on the end. once you find where they go unplug the end from the board and note which two pins it is plugged into. now plug the machine in and use a small flat blade screwdriver or knife to "short" those two pins. (just make contact to both of them at the same time). see if the machine turns on. (you have to have the big plug plugged into the board)

lmk!

EDIT: take a good look at the power supply, (the big box that all the power wires start at) it may have a reset button on it, I've seen a few that do. also look on the back and make sure your switch is set to 110/120v and not 220/240v.

what model of machine is this so i can get a mental picture of what you see?

double edit: where is the flashing green light located on the back? is it beside the network plug?

 

[Lessen]

yeah, i checked thes switch to make sure its on 115v. the green ligh tis on the power supply

http://s227.photobucket.com/albums/dd171/Lessen_photos/?action=view&current=img229964460307.jpg

 

[Hyster]

power supply most likely died. Not to expensive to replace.

 

[Webbage]

yeah, i checked thes switch to make sure its on 115v. the green ligh tis on the power supply

http://s227.photobucket.com/albums/dd171/Lessen_photos/?action=view&current=img229964460307.jpg

If it's that light that's flashing then it's likely dropped a voltage line and isn't working correctly, or part of it is faulty.

I'll ask again, is it a vendor made PC (Dell, HP etc.) or did you build it yourself, it's important to know before you go diving out to buy a PSU.

 

[Lessen]

i totally thought I made another post concerning that. Anyways, it's a HP a564n. the HP part number for the ps is 5187 1098.it's a Bestec.I'm seeing them for like $30

 

[beason]

did you try to bypass the switch? you can also put the jumper back on the plug and test the voltage from the molexes should get 12v and 5v from the red and yellow to the blacks

 

[Webbage]

i totally thought I made another post concerning that. Anyways, it's a HP a564n. the HP part number for the ps is 5187 1098.it's a Bestec. I'm seeing them for like $30

I couldn't see you did either, I know I asked twice, maybe you were gonna answer the first time but didn't.

Regardless, if they are easy to find a matching part number at that price I'd say it was probably a generic part.

Dell are known to use oddly wired up ATX PSUs that are incompatible with generics. It looks from the stuff I've read via Google like your HP is the same. There are plenty of replacements out there, I can't see from the replacements online if it's 480W or 250W. If it's 250W replace it with something beefier at the same time, with an AGP graphics card and extra RAM 250W is cutting it awfully fine on a Pentium 4 machine, especially a high speed model with HT.

These stupid shenanigans with PSUs are one reason I build my own PCs with components I know and understand. I know that doesn't help you and you are lucky you can find a replacement easily, I know people with Dells who haven't been so fortunate. Sadly, the ease of finding a replacement indicates that the original units obviously fail regularly. You might want to buy a second one just in case

 

[beason]

make sure wherever you buy it from has a return policy. when you get it only unplug the wires to the motherboard (may have a 4 pin along with the main plug) plug in the new power suply to the board only and test it out. I would hate for you the unplug everything and go through all the trouble if its not the power supply.

 

[Lessen]

I'm back!

Woo Hoo!

Posting from my PS3's onscreen keyboard was such a PITA. My phone was faster but it's get's annoying after a while. I have a new power supply and BB also cleaned out some viruse issue I had. Sometimes I wonder why we even bother with anti-virus stuff :shrug: Anyways, it's all back up and running. I have a new power strip/surge protector (the other one was pretty old). I'm gonna back up all of my files this weekend so I won't be freaking out so bad if something like that happens again.

I'm just glad to be back to posting like normal. You don't even know how much I was missing copy/paste... wow! yeah, you try inserting pictures into threads one character at a time. That SUCKS! Hehe!

 

[beason]

congrats! glad we could figure it out!

 

[ohmygahitscoby]

Congrats man!

 

[jerry7007]

wtf!?

Kool! Tats awesome!

 

[Webbage]

Woo Hoo!

Posting from my PS3's onscreen keyboard was such a PITA. My phone was faster but it's get's annoying after a while. I have a new power supply and BB also cleaned out some viruse issue I had. Sometimes I wonder why we even bother with anti-virus stuff :shrug: Anyways, it's all back up and running. I have a new power strip/surge protector (the other one was pretty old). I'm gonna back up all of my files this weekend so I won't be freaking out so bad if something like that happens again.

I'm just glad to be back to posting like normal. You don't even know how much I was missing copy/paste... wow! yeah, you try inserting pictures into threads one character at a time. That SUCKS! Hehe!

Good to hear ya got it all fixed up man.

If you ever get real desperate again and need to use your PS3 for the internet you could track down a copy of PS3 Linux on a LiveCD so you can boot Linux and use that for surfing on Firefox. Bit technical but it's better for the soul than using the standard Sony stuff I expect (never used it myself, I dream of owning a PS3 then look at my bank balance and sigh).

I took a brief look and you need a HDTV really to run Linux PS3 Live CDs because Linux is designed for PC monitors, not a standard def TV. 720p would be fine though if you've got it.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PlayStation_3

That's a link to the PS3 community page at Ubuntu, it all looks a bit scary to me, and I'd be very cautious about trying it on a PS3 and I know what I'm doing (that said I'd never need it on a PS3 as I have about 3 other potential Linux machines on hand

Oh and folks, remember, Backups are Good.

 

[Lessen]

Yeah, our t.v. is High Def so that would be ok. I'm cool with the standard browser on the PS3, I don't have any issues with it. It's just the typing and input that is a PITA. We took a trip to the mall yesterday and Gamestop had the new mini keypad attachment so I picked that up. That will make browsing and chatting much easier. It's all charged up so I think I'll go try it out now