A lovely disk boot failure

[ashtewierik]

Hey, I'm hoping to find some help here, if you have any ideas let me know.

So I built my first PC at the end of last year, it's been running great, no problems. Then a month ago, it started shorting out, I would power up and it would turn off 2 seconds later. I saved up some money, and got a new mother board thinking that was the problem. Turns out it wasn't and it was the power supply that had failed (corsair 600w) I don't know how it failed, but I am assuming a power surge, even though I don't remember one happening, and I have a surge protector board. But hey, so I bout a new 700w power supply, and this morning plugged it in. PC turns on, starts booting up, then gives me a lovely Disc boot error message, please insert recovery disc, blah blah blah. I thought maybe my hard drive got fried, so I threw in a brand new one. And attempted to install windows to it, I booted into windows install disc, but can't install because it recognises no hard drive being connected, the same thing it is doing to my original hard drive. I've opened the pc up and it doesn't seem like the hard drives are spinning, so I changed the power and sata cable running from the hard drives, still nothing. I'm stuck, any ideas?

 

[alexe3831]

First off when replacing a power supply you need to match the voltage's. You said the original PSU was a 600w, but you replaced with a 700w, having a higher wattage power supply can make components such as the hard drive not power up. I would recommend trading out the 700w for a 600w and then try putting in the hard drive.

Also if you have one, try plugging the hard drive in question into a external hard drive enclosure, and see if it can be read on another computer. If it cannot, your issue is most likely the drive but if it reads normally then its just an issue of the hard drive receiving too much power and you will need to change out your power supply as noted above.


Best of luck to you
~Alex

 

[Zoltan Head]

You said the original PSU was a 600w, but you replaced with a 700w, having a higher wattage power supply can make components such as the hard drive not power up.

I don't think this is right - if a PSU has too high a rating, it's just a waste of capacity, it's only if the rating is too low that components will fail (I always replace a failed PSU with a higher rating one, to give it a bit of "headroom".

 

[alexe3831]

Well I usually would agree, but I just finished having to salvage parts from my second custom built. I replaced a 600w PSU that had stopped working (it was old) with a 700w and ended up frying my motherboard. So it may not ALWAYS be true, but at least in personal experience it is not a good idea to play around with the PSU wattage.

~Alex

 

[Zoltan Head]

I replaced a 600w PSU that had stopped working (it was old) with a 700w and ended up frying my motherboard.

The motherboard or configuration must have been faulty, the PSU can't "force" extra power into something, it's not Physics (and ye cannae change the laws of Physics capn!). If this weren't true, then connecting a TV to the grid would blow it up because the grid can supply Gigawatts of juice!