Machine Won't Power Up

I have a homegrown PC. I swapped out a dead DVD drive today, and after putting the new drive in the machine suddenly it won't power up. Push the power button and nothing! I can see that the power supply is working because the LED on the mobo is on. I've checked the connection between the power switch and the mobo. I've even disconnected the new DVD drive in case it was the culprit. Still, nothing.

Can anyone suggest how I should proceed in diagnosing this?

 

bump

 

If you dont overclock, lets try this, unplug power supply, remove battery from motherboard, hold down on-off button for a few seconds. reinstall battery, see if it will boot. Post back. ed

 

Ok, after disconnecting the drives and removing the battery from the mobo, the system powers up.

But it won't boot properly. After the POST and device screens, when it would normally start booting XP, the machine reboots itself! It then cycles through and does the same thing over and over again.

Anyone have any ideas why this might be? It is possible that something got screwed up when the BIOS was reset? Or something else?

 

Ok, more info. I was able to boot to the XP CD-ROM. I entered the recovery console, got a prompt and typed "dir". I then get the message "Error during directory enumeration".

Does this mean my HD is fried? Or do I simply need to reformat and reinstall the OS. Or can recover from this in some easier way?

 

Try this,

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

 

"I entered the recovery console, got a prompt and typed "dir". I then get the message "Error during directory enumeration"."

Do the DOS commands work at all?

A:>dir /?

should list dir options and not do a dir. Also, I think the dir command is trying to do a dir of the CD, not the harddrive.

A:>?
or
A:>help

should list commands.

Don't conclude that your harddrive is bad because dir gives an error.

You should be able to repair or re-install XP without formatting the harddrive.

The a:> prompt doesn't mean that there is a floppy drive. A vitual drive may be created.

Try the memtest86-3.3.iso.zip (search in this forum for it) dowload (for making a CD) and run the memory test. You just put the burned CD in the drive and bootup. Pretty neat and simple. My m8000n computer with a dead BIOS and no bootup even runs this test. Very nice job to whoever wrote it.

 

No, this means the filesystem is damaged. It could be hard disk damage, but thats unlikely.


chkdsk /r from the recovery console should fix it.

If you try to repair, or reinstall XP while this damage is in place, you will fail.