Solve : Power on, No POST after hard drive upgrade?

1.	Solve : Power on, No POST after hard drive upgrade?
Answer» So I had a custom built machine with the following specs: AMD Phenom x4 965 (stock fan) Corsair 650w PSU 12GB ram GIGABYTE GA-MA790GPT-UD3H motherboard Sapphire Radeon 5770 320gb hard drive I wanted to upgrade the hard drive so I installed a Samsung F3 1TB today. I left the 320gb in there, but disconnected, I wanted to connect it later after I put an OS on the Samsung. WELL, I plugged the computer back in and turned it on, but there was nothing. No POST, no beeps (no PC speaker), nothing. I then removed everything from the computer except the PSU, CPU, and motherboard with no change. I tried both the motherboard display and video card display ports with no change. I took out the CMOS battery and left it out for 5+ minutes before re-inserting with no success. I then decided to take the old 320GB hard drive and put in a back up computer. I installed the hard drive into the PC: Athlon X2 4200+ Compaq Presario Box Computer 3GB ram Gigabyte Radeon 4550 This PC, which was working with a different 160gb drive just yesterday, would not POST with the 320gb I put in there. I would turn it on and there was nothing, no beeps, no POST. I then took out the 320gb and returned everything back to when the computer last worked and it's the same thing: power on, no POST. What did I just do to break 2 computers in one day?! Is there any way to figure this out? Thanks for any help.Your 'new' hard drive broke two computers. The simple answer is to junk that hard drive. If you WISH to explore this any further, you risk losing another PC. Now somebody will chime in here and say 'it is not logical'. Logic will not protect you. Logic is flawed when information is limited. You do not know what really is in that hard drive. Let me put it this way. If somebody wanted to deliberately sabotage your PC experience, they could do it with a a hard drive that has been equipped for the task. Was this a gift from your Mother-in-Law? Quote from: Geek-9pm on March 04, 2011, 10:59:43 PM Your 'new' hard drive broke two computers. The simple answer is to junk that hard drive. If you wish to explore this any further, you risk losing another PC. Now somebody will chime in here and say 'it is not logical'. Logic will not protect you. Logic is flawed when information is limited. You do not know what really is in that hard drive. Let me put it this way. If somebody wanted to deliberately sabotage your PC experience, they could do it with a a hard drive that has been equipped for the task. Was this a gift from your Mother-in-Law? I can't tell if you are being serious or not. I bought the hard drive from Newegg and it ARRIVED a few days ago.Absurd as it may seem. This time I am serious. Get a RMA from newegg ASAP. That should never happen. If is was you Mother-in-law, that would be more logical. It is not coincidence. You performed four tests. Two Motherboards or PSUs went down. You hope it was just the PSU doing a thermal reset, in which case it will survive. Was this a SATA drive? Quote from: Geek-9pm on March 05, 2011, 01:06:24 AM Absurd as it may seem. This time I am serious. Get a RMA from newegg ASAP. That should never happen. If is was you Mother-in-law, that would be more logical. It is not coincidence. You performed four tests. Two Motherboards or PSUs went down. You hope it was just the PSU doing a thermal reset, in which case it will survive. Was this a SATA drive? Yes it was a SATA drive. However, the Samsung only took down my custom built PC. I took the Western Digital originally in that custom machine to move it to another machine I was going to use as a temporary PC (lets call that Compaq). So the Western Digital was installed into the Compaq and wouldn't post. I removed the Western Digital HD and the Compaq still doesn't POST. The custom machine won't POST either. So I have two machines that don't POST. I stuck the Western Digital in a third machine (lets call this the HP) as a slave SATA drive and that machine booted up fine and I moved some data off the Western Digital. Bad drives, either SATA or PATA can stop a POST. But any machine should POST after the drive is removed and power back on. If a PSU goes down because of a thermal overload, it should recover in 5 to 30 minuets. If a motherboard has been damaged, it is not fantasy to expect it to recover in a useful way. But the CPU can and will do thermal overload. May take an hour to recover. Varies. If the Western Digital drive can pass diagnostics, it would mean that it was not the criminal element. I have never heard of a HDD taking down a system and later pass basic tests. Sorry to here you have two bad motherboards. I have about five or six bad mobos. Lost count. But I have five SYSTEMS that still work. Hate to throw anything away. FYI. The failure rate of large HDDs is larger than what the makers admit. Not a rumor. Google Hard Drive failure rate. Quote from: Geek-9pm on March 05, 2011, 02:01:34 AM Bad drives, either SATA or PATA can stop a POST. But any machine should POST after the drive is removed and power back on. If a PSU goes down because of a thermal overload, it should recover in 5 to 30 minuets. If a motherboard has been damaged, it is not fantasy to expect it to recover in a useful way. But the CPU can and will do thermal overload. May take an hour to recover. Varies. If the Western Digital drive can pass diagnostics, it would mean that it was not the criminal element. I have never heard of a HDD taking down a system and later pass basic tests. Sorry to here you have two bad motherboards. I have about five or six bad mobos. Lost count. But I have five systems that still work. Hate to throw anything away. FYI. The failure rate of large HDDs is larger than what the makers admit. Not a rumor. Google Hard Drive failure rate. I guess we will see in time. I plan to trying some exchanging of parts tomorrow like the PSU to see how things go, while possibly taking apart and putting back together the computer or even some breadboarding to troubleshoot. I really have no clue what has gone wrong.Hi, I had similar problem when finished installing a 2nd HDD. Solution was that Windows2000 renamed the second HDD with a " $ " ahead of the name which made the HDD INVISIBLE. Remove the " $ " if it is there. John Quote from: jagwinn on March 06, 2011, 07:29:55 AM Hi, I had similar problem when finished installing a 2nd HDD. Solution was that Windows2000 renamed the second HDD with a " $ " ahead of the name which made the HDD INVISIBLE. Remove the " $ " if it is there. John I would if I could, the problem is the computer does not POST with or without a hard drive in it.Does the machine with the old drive where you inserted a HD upgrade of 1TB working before no POST? Have you check your BIOS setup if the new drive was recognized? Quote from: jason2074 on March 06, 2011, 11:42:26 PM Does the machine with the old drive where you inserted a HD upgrade of 1TB working before no POST? Have you check your BIOS setup if the new drive was recognized? Yes it was working the same day as when I tried the HD update. I cannot check the BIOS setup on that machine because it does not POST at all. However I did put the 1TB drive in another machine and it was recognized with no problems. Quote I cannot check the BIOS setup on that machine because it does not POST at all. Have you tried atleast? Quote No POST, no beeps (no PC speaker), nothing Is there power running on the CPU tower with this information? Mobo lights and Front Panel/HD led lights, Fans. Have you tried putting back the working HD on that PC and what happens? Quote from: jason2074 on March 07, 2011, 07:22:03 PM Have you tried atleast?Is there power running on the CPU tower with this information? Mobo lights and Front Panel/HD led lights, Fans. Have you tried putting back the working HD on that PC and what happens? Yes I have tried. All fans run, the power LED is on, the HD activity light is on for 10 seconds before going dark (this is with or without a hard drive connected). Connected the past working hard drive back to the PC and same thing happens.I managed to get my custom build system (the one with the Antec case) POSTing again. Basically I removed everything from the PC except the PSU, case, motherboard, cpu, and one stick of RAM and I tried powering on. The computer still didn't post, but then I decided to hold the "reset" button and after a bit the machine rebooting and successfully completed POST with the BIOS appearing on screen. My only guess is that the reset button was stuck or I managed to recover the BIOS. Sadly my Compaq PC doesn't have a reset button, so even after I pulled everything and tried booting with only the PSU, case, motherboard, cpu, and one stick of RAM, the Compaq still doesn't POST. My assumption is I SOMEHOW badly corrupted the BIOS and I need to find a way to correct it. Quote Sadly my Compaq PC doesn't have a reset button The Power button is integrated with the Reset button on newer PCs to customize or set to Reset, Restart, Shutdown or Do nothing only within the OS. When everything is unplugged, you could press Power button for 20/30 seconds and remove and reinsert CMOS battery for a couple of minutes for it to make a reconfigure after all the swapping and testing. You should check or look for the documentation(online site) of the Compaq PC on how to manage a corrupt BIOS.

Answer»

So I had a custom built machine with the following specs:

AMD Phenom x4 965 (stock fan)
Corsair 650w PSU
12GB ram
GIGABYTE GA-MA790GPT-UD3H motherboard
Sapphire Radeon 5770
320gb hard drive

I wanted to upgrade the hard drive so I installed a Samsung F3 1TB today. I left the 320gb in there, but disconnected, I wanted to connect it later after I put an OS on the Samsung. WELL, I plugged the computer back in and turned it on, but there was nothing. No POST, no beeps (no PC speaker), nothing. I then removed everything from the computer except the PSU, CPU, and motherboard with no change. I tried both the motherboard display and video card display ports with no change. I took out the CMOS battery and left it out for 5+ minutes before re-inserting with no success.

I then decided to take the old 320GB hard drive and put in a back up computer. I installed the hard drive into the PC:

Athlon X2 4200+
Compaq Presario Box Computer
3GB ram
Gigabyte Radeon 4550

This PC, which was working with a different 160gb drive just yesterday, would not POST with the 320gb I put in there. I would turn it on and there was nothing, no beeps, no POST. I then took out the 320gb and returned everything back to when the computer last worked and it's the same thing: power on, no POST.

What did I just do to break 2 computers in one day?! Is there any way to figure this out?

Thanks for any help.Your 'new' hard drive broke two computers.
The simple answer is to junk that hard drive.
If you WISH to explore this any further, you risk losing another PC.
Now somebody will chime in here and say 'it is not logical'.
Logic will not protect you. Logic is flawed when information is limited. You do not know what really is in that hard drive.
Let me put it this way. If somebody wanted to deliberately sabotage your PC experience, they could do it with a a hard drive that has been equipped for the task.
Was this a gift from your Mother-in-Law?
Quote from: Geek-9pm on March 04, 2011, 10:59:43 PM

Your 'new' hard drive broke two computers.
The simple answer is to junk that hard drive.
If you wish to explore this any further, you risk losing another PC.
Now somebody will chime in here and say 'it is not logical'.
Logic will not protect you. Logic is flawed when information is limited. You do not know what really is in that hard drive.
Let me put it this way. If somebody wanted to deliberately sabotage your PC experience, they could do it with a a hard drive that has been equipped for the task.
Was this a gift from your Mother-in-Law?

I can't tell if you are being serious or not. I bought the hard drive from Newegg and it ARRIVED a few days ago.Absurd as it may seem.
This time I am serious. Get a RMA from newegg ASAP. That should never happen.
If is was you Mother-in-law, that would be more logical.
It is not coincidence.
You performed four tests.
Two Motherboards or PSUs went down.
You hope it was just the PSU doing a thermal reset, in which case it will survive.

Was this a SATA drive? Quote from: Geek-9pm on March 05, 2011, 01:06:24 AM

Absurd as it may seem.
This time I am serious. Get a RMA from newegg ASAP. That should never happen.
If is was you Mother-in-law, that would be more logical.
It is not coincidence.
You performed four tests.
Two Motherboards or PSUs went down.
You hope it was just the PSU doing a thermal reset, in which case it will survive.

Was this a SATA drive?

Yes it was a SATA drive. However, the Samsung only took down my custom built PC. I took the Western Digital originally in that custom machine to move it to another machine I was going to use as a temporary PC (lets call that Compaq). So the Western Digital was installed into the Compaq and wouldn't post. I removed the Western Digital HD and the Compaq still doesn't POST. The custom machine won't POST either. So I have two machines that don't POST. I stuck the Western Digital in a third machine (lets call this the HP) as a slave SATA drive and that machine booted up fine and I moved some data off the Western Digital.
Bad drives, either SATA or PATA can stop a POST.
But any machine should POST after the drive is removed and power back on. If a PSU goes down because of a thermal overload, it should recover in 5 to 30 minuets.
If a motherboard has been damaged, it is not fantasy to expect it to recover in a useful way. But the CPU can and will do thermal overload. May take an hour to recover. Varies.
If the Western Digital drive can pass diagnostics, it would mean that it was not the criminal element. I have never heard of a HDD taking down a system and later pass basic tests.
Sorry to here you have two bad motherboards. I have about five or six bad mobos. Lost count. But I have five SYSTEMS that still work. Hate to throw anything away.

FYI. The failure rate of large HDDs is larger than what the makers admit.
Not a rumor. Google Hard Drive failure rate.
Quote from: Geek-9pm on March 05, 2011, 02:01:34 AM

Bad drives, either SATA or PATA can stop a POST.
But any machine should POST after the drive is removed and power back on. If a PSU goes down because of a thermal overload, it should recover in 5 to 30 minuets.
If a motherboard has been damaged, it is not fantasy to expect it to recover in a useful way. But the CPU can and will do thermal overload. May take an hour to recover. Varies.
If the Western Digital drive can pass diagnostics, it would mean that it was not the criminal element. I have never heard of a HDD taking down a system and later pass basic tests.
Sorry to here you have two bad motherboards. I have about five or six bad mobos. Lost count. But I have five systems that still work. Hate to throw anything away.

FYI. The failure rate of large HDDs is larger than what the makers admit.
Not a rumor. Google Hard Drive failure rate.

I guess we will see in time. I plan to trying some exchanging of parts tomorrow like the PSU to see how things go, while possibly taking apart and putting back together the computer or even some breadboarding to troubleshoot. I really have no clue what has gone wrong.Hi,

I had similar problem when finished installing a 2nd HDD.

Solution was that Windows2000 renamed the second HDD with a " $ " ahead of the name which made the HDD INVISIBLE.

Remove the " $ " if it is there.

John Quote from: jagwinn on March 06, 2011, 07:29:55 AM

Hi,

I had similar problem when finished installing a 2nd HDD.

Solution was that Windows2000 renamed the second HDD with a " $ " ahead of the name which made the HDD INVISIBLE.

Remove the " $ " if it is there.

John

I would if I could, the problem is the computer does not POST with or without a hard drive in it.Does the machine with the old drive where you inserted a HD upgrade of 1TB working before no POST? Have you check your BIOS setup if the new drive was recognized? Quote from: jason2074 on March 06, 2011, 11:42:26 PM

Does the machine with the old drive where you inserted a HD upgrade of 1TB working before no POST? Have you check your BIOS setup if the new drive was recognized?

Yes it was working the same day as when I tried the HD update. I cannot check the BIOS setup on that machine because it does not POST at all. However I did put the 1TB drive in another machine and it was recognized with no problems. Quote

I cannot check the BIOS setup on that machine because it does not POST at all.

Have you tried atleast?
Quote

No POST, no beeps (no PC speaker), nothing

Is there power running on the CPU tower with this information? Mobo lights and Front Panel/HD led lights, Fans. Have you tried putting back the working HD on that PC and what happens? Quote from: jason2074 on March 07, 2011, 07:22:03 PM

Have you tried atleast?Is there power running on the CPU tower with this information? Mobo lights and Front Panel/HD led lights, Fans. Have you tried putting back the working HD on that PC and what happens?

Yes I have tried.

All fans run, the power LED is on, the HD activity light is on for 10 seconds before going dark (this is with or without a hard drive connected).

Connected the past working hard drive back to the PC and same thing happens.I managed to get my custom build system (the one with the Antec case) POSTing again. Basically I removed everything from the PC except the PSU, case, motherboard, cpu, and one stick of RAM and I tried powering on. The computer still didn't post, but then I decided to hold the "reset" button and after a bit the machine rebooting and successfully completed POST with the BIOS appearing on screen. My only guess is that the reset button was stuck or I managed to recover the BIOS.

Sadly my Compaq PC doesn't have a reset button, so even after I pulled everything and tried booting with only the PSU, case, motherboard, cpu, and one stick of RAM, the Compaq still doesn't POST. My assumption is I SOMEHOW badly corrupted the BIOS and I need to find a way to correct it.
Quote

Sadly my Compaq PC doesn't have a reset button

The Power button is integrated with the Reset button on newer PCs to customize or set to Reset, Restart, Shutdown or Do nothing only within the OS. When everything is unplugged, you could press Power button for 20/30 seconds and remove and reinsert CMOS battery for a couple of minutes for it to make a reconfigure after all the swapping and testing. You should check or look for the documentation(online site) of the Compaq PC on how to manage a corrupt BIOS.

Solve : Power on, No POST after hard drive upgrade?

Discussion

No Comment Found

Related InterviewSolutions

Reply to Comment