Frustrating PC problem...

[Waffle]

Let me put some system specs up first:

250W Power Supply
Abit ZM-6 Mainboard
Celeron 400
WD HD
Seagate HD
Pioneer DVD 104s
Ricoh CD-RW 6/4/32
Sigma Designs DVD Decoder card
SB Live
Voodoo3 2000 AGP
3com ethernet card

Recently, while computing, my computer abruptly crashed
(signal cut-off to monitor, hard drive stopped spinning,
HD light solidly on). At first I thought it was my HD
crashing. I switched off the computer from the back and
attempted to restart. Only the CPU fan, and the Power nad HD
lights came on. No output to the screen, no HDs spinning,
not DVD, CD-RW drive lights.

Then I thought had to be the power supply
not getting power to the HDs, DVD, CD-RW drives. After
fiddling around a bit I noticed a strange behavior. When
I removed the IDE1 ribbon cable from the main board and
turned the power back on my HDs spun up fine. The same
happened when I removed the IDE2 ribbon cable from the
motherboard, they powered up just fine. I started to think
irrationally and bought a IDE controller card, thinking
it would help. No dice.

Anyone one have a clue to this? Maybe a new Power Supply?
A new main board?

Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
waffle

 

[camieabz]

It might be a faulty drive cable or a bad connection.

A new power supply certainly wouldn't hurt the situation any, and its a cheaper option than most. Once replaced, it takes it out of the equation for next to no money output. If it turns out to be something else, you have a spare power supply for the future.

Have you changed any hardware or installed any new software or reconfigured anything recently? This might be the answer.

<b>
"Now drop your weapons or I'll kill him with this deadly jelly baby."
</b>

 

[peach]

<font color=blue>I hope you read this. <font color=red>NEVER POWER YOUR HD WITHOUT AN IDE CONNECTION.<font color=blue> I have experienced the wrath of this mistake. What <i>can</i> happen is it can/will corrupt any number of files. The files, say a doc or an AutoCAD dwg will either not open, or open with problems. You have to individually salvage each precious file, assuming there are files you consider precious, with special utilities that examine the file and fiz whats wrong. Usually certain charachter/codes (in a doc wpd file) or lines and objects (in a dwg file) are deleted. So then you must carefully examine each document, assuming you were able to save it, to see what was deleted and needsa to be replaced.

Bottom line, <font color=red>NEVER POWER YOUR HD WITHOUT AN IDE CONNECTION.<font color=blue>

BTW sounds like a mobo problem.

<i><font color=blue>on company time....</i>