Burning smell from tower

[haggardhearts]

While watching a video file from USB my screen froze and a burning smell emitted from my desktop. Now when I boot it won't go past my MB splash screen... I had my power supply tested and its fine. No visible damage on my motherboard. Any suggestions?

 

[USAFRet]

Well....something fried.

RAM, mb, video. Take it all apart, inspect everything for scorching.
Put it back together piece by piece, testing at each change.

 

[Snipergod87]

Do you any another computer or does a friend have a computer you can test your parts out on? Usually the damage is not visible.
As USAFRet suggested you should also take everything out and plug stuff in 1 by 1. Start with just CPU+Mobo+1 stick of RAM. and see what happens.

 

[haggardhearts]

I unplugged an IDE cable that goes from my disc drive to the hard drive then to my primary IDE slot on my mother board and my pc started right up...wondering if its the cord or my disc drive bc my hard drive is working and it fires right up to my desktop...any ideas ...I think this pretty much rules out that my motherboard is the problem

 

[smeezekitty]

Not completely. But it makes it less likely to be a motherboard problem.
A burned up CD drive could certainly cause issues and hanging on post when it tries to check it.

 

[haggardhearts]

The drive is where the burning smell seems to be coming from but I'm not sure... Would it be ok to use the same IDE cable or would I be better off getting a new one to try.... I am happy to hear that a burnt up optical drive could cause that splash screen hang though bc I never really thought about it