It had worked fine for several months, now won’t even turn on. Indicator light on the external card reader was on until I flipped the power switch on the back off-on, and now that’s off also. Not sure if there’s some internal reset.
I have to leave for a trip tomorrow morning and have two projects that have to be done today. I can try to do them on my laptop, but there’s a third project requiring files from the main computer that I cannot access. Advice on making this work would be much appreciated.
I tried to reach my competent local friends, no luck. This is a very time-sensitive issue, so any leads on who can help right away would be appreciated. The power supply is 1050W and so I can’t get a local replacement today. Not even sure if that’s the culprit, could be a bad switch — I have no way to test it.
As a last resort you could buy an external hard drive enclosure, pull the card drive from your desktop, install it in the external enclosure and access your files that way.
Take off the side panel and see if there are any lights on the motherboard. If you have lights you power supply is probably okay.
If you have more than one memory stick pull one and see if the PC will boot up and then switch the sticks. A bad memory stick can prevent a PC from working. Same goes for additional cards like a video or sound card.
Double check the CPU fan, if the fan does not work the Pc will shut off quickly to prevent over heating.
If you can get to the Bios screen you may see a check mark that sys halt on all errors. Sometimes a bad keybourd will cause the PC to halt.
From what you describe I lean towards a bad power supply or motherboard but do like Mark says and you should be able to get the data off your hard drive.
No BIOS. Just not even starting the fan.
A holy crap fix is to pull the hard drive, throw it into whatever desktop you have sitting around & let her rip. Likely you’ll have to replace whatever drivers are not compatible w/ the host machine’s hardware but an hour of cussing & a good internet connection will fix.
Check the fuses/breakers.
Does the PS get warm?
Is it plugged into a power strip?
Other “simple” fixes are:
Disconnect everything but the monitor and power, try to start the box. If that fails:
Make sure it’s not the power supply or UPS if you have one, by plugging power straight into the wall.
Card readers tend to cause faults; if you can open the box, see if you can disconnect that from the motherboard. If that doesn’t help, go ahead and disconnect ALL of the drives from the motherboard. If reseating the RAM doesn’t help after that, and you’re getting any spin from the fan, I’d lean towards, same as Jamie, a blown motherboard. But a motherboard and power supply can occasionally mutually suicide (that’s what happened to my box back in July), so it isn’t necessarily an “either-or” situation.
Do you have a back up drive (like a WD Passport)? Because now’s the situation you’d be using it.
If you’ve a RAID5 array, try to get the same motherboard/chipset/RAID controller. If the motherboard’s blown and you don’t have that, unless you’re using a separate RAID controller card, you’ll lose any unbacked up data when the RAID is rebuilt.
Just had a thought. If you have multiple video cards try pulling one. If it still won’t work switch to the other. I had a video card go bad one me and it prevented my computer from booting.
if there is no start up fan check to make sure all your power connection are plugged in and make sure the power button form the case hasn’t gotten lose form the mother board
On some power supplies one of the cords plugs into the little box. I went nuts one time because that connection was loose.
Power Supply. Multimeter will give you some indication if there is any power.
If there is power at the ends, motherboard is gone.
Everytime I had issues, no power, no lights, no fans….power supply.