From your description, it appears that you are getting power to the "computer box", but then nothing. Yet you say that you have checked the "power supply". If this means that the fan on the computer's power supply is working when the computer is supposed to be on, then the problem is seemingly not getting power from the computer's power supply to the hard drives. There are several reasons for that without the hard drives being bad. If the power supply fan is not working, then the separate on/off switch for the power supply might have accidently been turned off. It is located on the power supply on the back of the computer. Simple to fix.

Other than the on/off switch, there may be one or more bad components such as power supply, CPU and/or CPU fan, motherboard, RAM, video card, hard drive(s), etc. To narrow it down, a more detailed description of what happens when the computer is turned on is needed. Is there any noise(s) such as fans, beep(s), hard drives "spinning up", etc? Does the monitor have anything showing on it? Did you have a power loss or surge prior to the problem? Do you have AC power protection for the computer and what type (surge protection or UPS)?

Eventually you will need to get inside the case to diagnose and/or fix the problem. If you are not comfortable with that, you will need technical assistance.

Hope your problem is easy to solve and fix.

Tom Mayer




-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Feb 25, 2005 7:50 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [PCBUILD] Desperate!

The strangest thing happened to my computer yesterday and I am at a complete
loss as to how to fix it. There simply is no power to the hard drive. I've
checked all the cables, the outlets, the power supply --- everything else is
still on (monitor, printer, scanner, lights, etc), but for some reason, I can't
get any power to the computer box. It's a Compaq Presario, just 2 years old,
can't imagine what went wrong. Does anyone have any ideas? How do you check for
what's wrong if you can't get any power? I am desperate as my entire company
contents are on the two hard drives on that computer (yes, I backed up but it's
to a second hard drive). It was operating Windows XP. Thanks for any insights
you can provide.

Mary Deckert

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                     support at our newest website:
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