It's not uncommon for the power supply to shut down if a component is bad.
So a fried hard disk can prevent the power supply from coming on, so the fan
does not spin.  You can't test the power supply by disconnecting everything
and turning it on; if it senses no load, it should just sit there and do
nothing.  The proper diagnostic trick is to unplug all your drives, floppy,
cd, etc and try turning the pc on.  If nothing happens you remove
non-essential cards like modem, network, (I don't take the sound card out
now since it can be a pain reinstalling) and try again.  Still no luck? Pull
all the memory you can (pentium's require a minimum ram install of a pair of
matched simms, you may have two pair installed) and try again.

If you are still not getting any indication of power, you may as well try a
last ditch move.  Disconnect the wires from the motherboard and reconnect
one drive, preferably one that has an led or is noisy enough so you can tell
its getting power, and try again.  Success here would indicate a bad video
card or (more likely) a dead cpu.

If at any time you do get power, reconnect one thing at a time and repeat
the test until something fails.

A power supply replacement is typically a messy job.  Lots of wires and
tight confinement, and for AT power supplies, you have to remove or
disconnect the switch too.

Tom Turak

-----Original Message-----
From: William Closure [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, January 01, 2002 2:19 AM

Magitronic Pentium of unknown age running Windows 98.  Fairly stable,
although I have been having keyboard freezeups, solvable by unplugging
keyboard and plugging it back in.  Otherwise, it has been pretty reliable,
if
slow.

When I turned it on today, it said something about Primary Hard Drive,
followed by something ominous like it was the end of the world.  Couldn't
even get that far after turning it off and back on.  During various efforts
to restart, speakers would make sound kinda like the pop      pop       pop
   pop      you would hear on a phonograph when you reach the end of a
record.  (Am I dating myself?)  Another time, it sounded like the
interference you get on your car radio when you're in an underground garage,
(instead of your radio station) with the frequency increasing as the engine
revs up.  Needless to say, hard drive failure came to mind.

What makes me question that diagnosis, though, is that the fan stopped, too.
I can't believe the fan would be dependent on the hard drive working.  So,
I'm thinking power supply failure.  Does that sound like a reasonable
diagnosis?  (Quick offlist replies would be appreciated.)  Again, any words
of wisdom on replacing the power supply?

                  Visit our website regularly for FAQs,
               articles, how-to's, tech tips and much more
                          http://freepctech.com