Argggggh my computer won't load up!

[crimsonFOX3214]

right last night i went to plug in a charger when BANG!! and the computer and monitor flashed off and on everything was alright though.
i look down at the plug to find headphones trapped under the plug and have been broken.
we turn off the computer to take out the plug safely then turn the computer back but its just stays at the starting screen and when you press delete it brings up the menu but stays on.

PLEASE I NEED HELP I CANT AFFORD A NEW COMPUTER AND ITS GOT A TON OF MY WORK ON!!!

WHAT CAN DO?

 

[mike1959]

So what exactly happens when you press the power on button?
The monitor comes on? Do the fans spin? Does Windows load at all?

 

[crimsonFOX3214]

it goes onto the screen at the start where it gives you option of pressing esc or delete to bring up menus and even on the menu it doesn't do anything it just stays the same.

the fans work and I've cleaned them so what could the problem be.

 

[mike1959]

You say your pc gets to the start screen, by that do you mean the black screen with white text, or does it load all the way to Windows desktop? (Start menu lower left, icons on screen, taskbar at bottom edge of screen?)
If you had a surge to your pc, when the mains flashed the plug, it could have done a good deal of damage, so you need to pinpoint what does work.
Of course the data on your C drive is the most value to you, so if you have a spare desktop pc, you could take the C drive from the damaged pc, put it into another pc as an extra hard drive, (might appear as 'D' on that one) and you can see and use all of your files as before.
If you can hear the fans running, ok. Can you power up the pc with the side off the case? Can you see the CPU fan running? Can you see the Hard drive light flickering on the front of the case? (That's the important one to find out.)

 

[crimsonFOX3214]

well it gets to the first screen the one right at the start when you turn it on and doesn't load windows.
the only thing I can do is press delete to open the other set-up menu thing and even then it doesn't do anything at all.

 

[Leeky]

That is BIOS, where the motherboard initialises the computer, and then hands over running to the OS.

Head into BIOS (the setup menu as you described it) and check to see if the hard disk(s) are listed and identified correctly.

Then start it again, but tell us exactly what it says when it gets to its furthest point. Does it come up with an error like cannot find OS, or something like that?

Can you confirm the charger is the genuine item for your laptop? I want to ensure you haven't plugged an incompatible one in and therefore applied too much current to your system board.

 

[crimsonFOX3214]

its a computer and even when i press the delete button the screen stays the same and doesn't change

 

[Leeky]

Its a PC with a charger?

If it has a charger lead then the comments above apply.

They only wouldn't apply if it was a PC and it was a power lead that plugged into the PSU in the tower. They are not chargers, its simply a lead.

 

[crimsonFOX3214]

no the charger was a phone charger

 

[crimsonFOX3214]

i went to plug in my phone charger when i didn't notice that my headphones had went under the plug and then BOOM and everything flashed off and then on

 

[mike1959]

So your computer is not a laptop, it's a desktop (tower) type?
You say about plugging in a phone charger, so do you mean you are using a 4 or 6 way extension outlet, where you can plug in several items using one mains plug?
You just charge the phone in a spare mains socket in the extension that also powers your PC? I think that's the situation.

If you can only get to the BIOS screen and without knowing any more, it's likely the motherboard has some damage.
As I wrote in a previous post, when you power on your pc, can you look carefully on the front of it, at the LED with a sign next to it that looks like a stack of CD's, or a 'pot' shape.
It's the hard drive activity LED. Can you see it do anything? It won't be on all the time, just a flicker on and off. If it does flicker, you can most likely get your data back.
You really need to take the hard drive out, and fit it to another working PC, to really know.
Let us know what you find.

 

[Leeky]

i went to plug in my phone charger when i didn't notice that my headphones had went under the plug and then BOOM and everything flashed off and then on

Ah, that makes sense now.

Sounds like your attached headphones have carried the mains current into the sound port, in which case I'd bet good money your motherboard has sustained damage.

Its also possible other components attached to the motherboard have as well.

I would try Mike1959's suggestion about putting your hard disk into another computer to see if you can access the data it contains.

 

[Lokalaskurar]

As an extension to what Leeky mentioned;

So if I understood everything correctly, you plugged a phone charger into a power outlet, but there were a pair of headphones blocking the outlet. The headphones broke, and carried the outlet's electricity flow into the 'phones' (audio) port. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Sadly, it sounds like you blew a portion of the south bridge. BIOS works off the LPC (low pin count) circuitry, and would thus be un-affected by the surge. But the hard disk uses a bus connected to the south bridge. The audio I/O also uses the south bridge.

My money's on that the surge from the audio I/O blew the south bridge's internal I/O system = hard drive cannot be "called" or checked = OS boot failure.

BIOS seems un-affected, as it works off the LPC = semi-protected from the voltage surge.

With a little luck, a workshop could swap the motherboard's south bridge chip. BUT: the damage could theoretically spread to a lot more areas. Presumably external cards like TV-tuners, sound cards etc. But not the graphics card, it works off the north bridge fortunately.

And as the hard drive needs to be powered via DC, not outlet-style AC to write/read data, your hard drive might have survived. Thus, your data can (in theory) easily be retrievable using another computer as a host.

So the data sounds intact, but the motherboard seems to be fried...

If you need any of my vocabulary/methods explained, feel free to ask!