tech support

[Merge]

so i just had a small power surge/cut that switched off my computer and couple other things in my room yesterday. The computer now does not boot up past the motherboard screen.. does this mean its fucked my harddrive? or is it a simple case of replacing something. If the power cut fried the motherboard does that mean all data on the harddrive is wiped?

because i really..really...need everything on there...

[perceptualChaos]

you need to describe exactly what happens in detail... can you enter the BIOS by pressing delete when the computer starts up? are there any error messages? exactly what stage does it not do what you expect it to?

 

what operating system do you have? do you have the install disc?

[Dr Awesome]

As what Perceptual Chaos says the more info the better.

 

Fingers crossed it's just taken out either your power supply (unlikely, as in that case the machine wouldn't boot), or some other part of the computer.

Having HDD's killed outright in this way is fairly uncommon nowadays.

 

Is this machine a desktop or a laptop?

[zzzp]

is it overclocked? cant be psu if it turns on

[Merge]

ok this is what happened the first couple times i turned it on after the power cut.. it would turn on, but would not advance past the motherboard screen. when i press DEL to enter BIOS setup nothing happens. the only button that seemed to work was the one to enter POST, but when i pressed that it said 'searching for IDE devices' and never found anything. I turned off the computer, unplugged the power cable and pressed the on button because apparently that purges any left over electricity. when i turned back on the computer the motherboard screen did not even appear. now its just a black screen. im freaking out a bit.

 

it is a desktop computer not a laptop.

 

oh and i have vista home premium, and yes i have the install disc.

[Pakage]

Best troubleshooting technique is to strip back the system as much as possible, then try swapping out the remaining components if you have any spares to try and figure out whats causing the issue by process of elimination.

 

So if you have multiple hard drives, disconnect them all except the one with your OS on it. Disconnect any non-vital PCI cards. If you have onboard graphics, try using that and removing your graphics card. Remove all but 1 stick of RAM. Unplug your CD/DVD drive etc etc..

 

once your system is stripped to its essential components. Try starting it up. If it works, plug things back in 1 by 1 to figure out what was causing the issue. If its not working, try swapping out the remaining components either with some of the stuff you removed if its a double up, or any spares you have lying around (if any).

 

Past that, theres not really much you can do without some proper testing equipment.

 

Its not making any noises is it? beep codes?

[perceptualChaos]

well it sounds like the motherboard is fucked, but it could be a number of things. First thing I would do is GENTLY take out your hard drive (the one with the important information if you have more than one) and put it into another computer as a slave device (or an external HDD case would be better) and see if you can read it on the other computer. If you can read it then copy everything important onto another drive to be safe.

 

Securing your valuable information should be number one priority if you're stupid enough to not have regular backups (truth hurts sometimes )

 

Once you've done that it's just a matter of money. If your computer is really good then you might want to look at swapping components until you get it working again as Craig suggested... you might also just want to buy a new computer if you can't be fucked/it's not worth debugging. For now I'd just work on getting your data.

 

P.S. Try to turn your computer on as least often as possible... if you have any surface damage on your hard drive you can make it worse by turning on the drive.

[mike]

Thank fuck this happened AFTER you did your thesis