New hard drive kills my display?

[alhow]

Hi
Have a rather strange problem was was hoping someone might be able to give me some insight about:

Basically I replaced my secondary sata hard drive on one of my desktops with a brand new drive (Like I have done a couple of times before with no problem), when I then turned the PC on I could hear it booting as normal but there was no display signal to the monitor. I replaced the old drive yet there was still no display signal- spent a couple of hours trying different monitors/cables, making sure eveything was plugged in ok (graphics card seems to be ok as well), nothing returned the display so I gave up and went to bed. Got up the next day tried it first thing and the display was working again!

Repeated the process (i.e. replaced the drive) and has the same problem (no display) which, again, replacing the old drive did not fix immediately but fixed if I left the whole system powered off with the old drive in and came back a few hours later.

Really confused by this and would really appreciate anyone who has a clue whats going on letting me know!

thanks in advance

 

[vacunita]

I see 2 possibilities:

1. Your PSU is unable to adequately power the whole system when the new drive is connected. Meaning the new drive consumes more power than the old one. And more power than the PSU can dish out.


2. Your new drive has a defect, an electrical short, or something similar, that prevents the system form actually booting.


Can you give us a some more details about your system, like the PSU, and the type of video card. etc...



----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[wahnula]

I agree that a faulty drive is the most likely scenario, but it could also be the PC is trying to boot off of that secondary drive, but that would at least mean a BIOS screen would be displayed. The "hairline PSU" scenario that vacunita points out is unlikely but not impossible, a wonky PSU can do amazing things. I also agree we need more details about the PC.

Since you seem to be able to reproduce the problem that's a good thing for troubleshooting. Next time it won't boot, unplug the PC from the wall, turn the PSU's I/O switch to off, remove the CMOS battery, and hold the power switch down for about 30 seconds. Replace battery, reconnect, turn switch on, turn on PC. What happens?

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[alhow]

Thank you both for your replies

Unfortunately seems I was a bit optimistic about having fixed the display by replacing the drive PC display now seems to have gone completely so looks like something has permanently failed (have had issues with the graphics card before so will replace that and see what happens I guess)

(Having tested the drive on another PC it does seem to have some kind of problem so am returning that to the vendor)

(not having much luck today!)

 

[wahnula]

Have you tried the CMOS-battery-out-unplug-PSU-hold-down-power-button (whew!) test?

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[alhow]

Hi
Sorry yes I did try that
3 times but nothing changed (what could it have done?)

Was thinking the next thing to do is buy a replacement graphics/display card from ebay (it's an AGP GeForce 6600GT for the record) as even though it looks like its working (fan is at any rate) was thinking it must be that, does that like the next best step?

 

[wahnula]

what could it have done?

It could have determined if your PSU or MB power circuits were holding voltage that continued the issue...I've had it work for several weird cases in the past.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[Freestone]

No display doesn't necessarily mean a bad video card. A PC has to get through some basic Power-On Self-Tests (POST) before the video adapter is enabled. It could very well be your current power supply is bad and that is what took out your new drive, not the other way around.

Any chance of getting another supply to test with before shelling out money for a different video card?

How old is the system you are dealing with? AGP suggests one a little on the older side so also examine the motherboard for bad capacitors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

http://www.badcaps.net/pages.php?vid=5

 

[alhow]

Thanks for explaining Tony (was just curious)


and thanks for the advice Freestone I'll try what you suggested first (and yes it is 3/4 years old- not my main PC and is not that much used anymore, but is really bugging me that I dont know what is wrong with it)

 

[edfair]

I would be curious what would have happened if you had used the drive as primary and attempted to load an OS on it.
There are virii that attack prior to booting (stoned, for example) and those types could create issues like you experienced.


Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.