HELP !!! FIRE IN THE HOLE???

[trish95]

I need some great advice here.. I was asked to fix a friend's computer that had been sitting for close to a year. I found this out after the fact... anyway- she said that a file had been deleted and she couldn't remember where her disk was. It seemed fairly simple to fix (System.1st restore).... right!
Well,she drops it by my house, and I start working on getting it cleaned up. I was a little hesitant seeing the layers of dust inside the tower, but thought a can of compressed air will do the trick. I cleaned it up, double checked everything, plugged it up ready to restore her system, then smoke starts coming up from one of the wires connected to the hard drive! I unplug it from the tower, and find that the red wire (on the Y connector) had melted. Just that one wire, nothing else.
I don't mind telling you that I am not real excited about touching that machine anymore. It is still in the same place. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can fix it? Should I just replace the power supply and hard drive? What could have caused just one wire to melt?
I made sure I was grounded - especially since I don't like getting shocked. haha
Thank you all, in advance, for any help you may provide.
Trish

 

[SAseeker]

The wires could have been frayed. Have you tried testing the HD on another PC. See if it works there
Also remove the HD and check power lead to the CD and stiffy drive, if thewy are OK then switch on the PC. See if you can boot with a stiffy drive. Run DOSDIAGS from the stiffy ( you can get it from DOWNLOAD.COM ) This will tell you if the rest of the system is OK. If the drive still works you can place a splitter on one of the other power leads and try it like that.

Good luck

 

[edfair]

Fray wouldn't cause it. Hard drive power is overdrawing. Won't kill you , the PSU will die first, it it hasn't already.
Try it again with the hard drive disconnected and see if you get POST. Then plug the HD back in momentarily and see if you get motor on it. Should start turning as soon as power is applied.
And it wouldn't be unusual for the wire to overheat if the crimp on the molex pin was faulty. Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[mistanapesis]

For the power wire to melt it would suggest to me that there is a dead short in the hard drive, surprised a fuse never blew before it melted. Of course could be a power supply putting out too much, never seen it. I would test voltages on outputs. Still think its har disk though. If your unsure....Dont do it!

 

[KarveR]

I'd go with a dead short in the HD too, wouldn't want to plug it into another machine.

I think I'd change the PSU and test the machine with an old but known working(read: don't mind if it dies) type drive. ***************************************
Party on, dudes!

 

[Prospect34]

Not sure about this,but it seems I read somewhere that if the power selection switch on the back of the case was changed from 115 it could burn out one of the wires.

 

[Guest_imported]

Disconnect the hard drive, and check voltages coming out of the PSU. If ok, turn your attention to the hard disk. Check the resistance between the 5v pin and either of the 0v centre pins. An average would be around 300 ohms. Very much less and the problem is definitely in the drive...

ROGER - GØAOZ.

 

[edfair]

prospect34
changing the voltage switch generally causes flaky voltages to the machine but doesn't burn anything out. I've had machines operate for 3 years with the switch wrong and never knew it. Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.