HELP - Detecting IDE drives too long, now computer won't POST

[kingthomas]

Hello there. The other day my PC won't boot because the "Detecting IDE drives" took too long. I would leave it for minutes, still nothing happened. Now I took out the only IDE drive in my PC, which is the optical drive (all the hard drives are SATA). I took out the IDE cable and the power.

Now when I put everything back together, the computer won't even POST! Did I do anything wrong? I tried putting the cables back again but still no POST.

The computer still turns on, but it'll start for a few seconds, turn off all of the sudden, and then continue running into oblivion. All of the fans are still working, such as the VGA and whatnot.

How will I troubleshoot the computer? I'm a bit noobish when it comes to these things. Thanks.

Here are my specs:

VGA - Palit gtx 550 ti jetstream
CPU - Intel Core 2 E6700 @ 3.3 GHz
Mobo - Gigabyte GA - G41M - Combo
RAM - Corsair DDR3 8GB
PSU - Corsair HX 620
Optical - Lite On 22x IDE
Hard drives - 4 Seagate drives

As you can see my system is quite old, but it fits my needs as I typically do medium gaming, nothing demanding like Battlefield 3.

What could be the problem? Is there a short circuit or something?

Thanks.

 

[noidea_77]

Difficult to say, but the IDE problem was obviously not the root cause. It could be the PSU or the motherboard. There is a picture in this article, that shows defective capacitors on the motherboard. If you find those, It's the mobo.

 

[kingthomas]

thanks for the information. i'll try troubleshooting one part at a time to get to the root problem.

there's even no beep in the motherboard. 🙁 i hope it's not the PSU. it's quite a good one. i was hoping to replace the motherboard and processor while retaining the video card and PSU.

thanks again.

 

[noidea_77]

The link to the bad capacitors was missing in my first post:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

 

[kingthomas]

thanks for the link. i'll get back to you once i open up the PSU. it's a good five years old already, probably six and past the warranty.

 

[kingthomas]

Best answer selected by kingthomas.