Power supply burned up - both hard drives in the process?

[RedSkies]

This is most likely a dumb question but it's been a while since I've done any hardware tinkering and I need some input before I waste a lot of time on this.

I inadvertently left my old PC running unattended for a few hours - something I rarely do because I've suspected one or more components were probably on their last legs. From another room I heard a loud cracking noise and found that it had shut down completely and wouldn't power up again. The room also has a very strong "hot electrical" smell too.

I've just replaced the power supply, but now when I attempt to start up, I get a boot disk error. The system has 2 hard drives with a master/slave configuration and the BIOS seems to be able to see both, however, it doesn't appear that either are spinning so needless to say, I can't get it to boot.

Is it possible that the grisly death of the power supply caused both hard drives to fry as well? I guess I'm not too concerned about the primary hard drive since I can always replace it and reinstall the OS/drivers/etc. However I did have some data on the slave drive that I'd like to get back if possible.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

 

[paparazi]

Unfortunately very possible, try the drive as slave in another system to be sure. Martin


Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.

 

[edfair]

Generally have found that the hard drives are more forgiving than some other components, but it definitely won't be the first time a PS took out hard drives.
May be time to try a controller swap on the drive if you can find a duplicate. Sounds like the +12 took out the motor circuits.

Ed Fair
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.

 

[RedSkies]

Thanks for your replies, guys. However, the situation has changed slightly. It seems the drive I had configured as the slave with all the data I need works but unfortunately the O/S was on the master, which is dead as a doornail (whatever that means, but presumably it's especially dead!)

Here's the problem: A long time ago, my internal CD ROM stopped working. I replaced it, went through lots of pain and agony and couldn't get the new one to work either. However, I decided to write it off because I could always use the external USB CD-RW. I even thought I was clever for having the foresight to copy the contents of my WIN98 CD onto this drive in case I ever had a problem. Unfortunately I forgot that it was the upgrade version, so now when I attempted to install the Win98 upgrade on the working hard drive, it asks me where the previous version of Windows is.

So! I guess I need to get a hold of the Win95 install files on floppies somehow and install that first, before I can try to install Win98. As luck would have it, I have the full version of Win95 but it's on a CD-ROM

Is there any way to convert the contents of the CD-ROM to floppies? (Sorry, I'm getting a little off topic here.) It seems this is my only option, unless I want to slog through hundreds of data files in DOS and copy them to floppies individually, which I don't. Any other suggestions are very welcome.

Thanks again.

 

[edfair]

Should be able to point to the 95CD as verification.
You could pull the 95cab files, but you would need a set of utilities to do it since the cab files are DMF format (1.7)
One DMF utility set is fdformat. (do a google search)

Ed Fair
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.

 

[kshugart]

Be aware that Windows 95a and b has no support for USB. Windows 95c has the drivers and usb compatibility.
A full retail version of Windows 98 or SE should be quite reasonable as MS no longer supports it.

Klon Shugart
Data Recovery Specialist
CCNA/MCP2K/CDRT
Microsoft Certified Partners

http://www.adv-data.com

 

[RedSkies]

Right, but I'd almost have to have the install files on floppy disks due to the situation with my CD-ROM not working (I could not get its replacement to work either so it may be something with the motherboard, who knows?). I'm not sure if Win98 is available on floppies, is it? Plus I hate to pay for something a third time. I've already paid for a full version of Win95 plus an upgrade version of Win98!

Thanks for replying though.

 

[ceh4702]

Might be easiest to just buy a CDROM. You really need one anyway.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[RedSkies]

I've already tried two different CD-ROMs. I'm 99% certain it's not the CD-ROM itself. Something else is wrong - possibly with the motherboard. It's unlikely that one relatively new and one brand new CD-ROM would both be defective and (mis)behave in exactly the same way. So I could probably continue to buy and install new CD-ROMs until I'm blue in the face and it still wouldn't help.

I'm afraid the only way I'm going to be able to do this without dumping loads of money into a fairly old machine anyway, is to get a full installable version of Win95 or 98 on floppies.

I'm currently trying to find a utility that will format floppies in MDF format so that I can copy the CAB files from the Win95 CD to floppies. I've tried using WinImage to format the floppies but I'm still getting errors about there not being enough space on the disck to accomodate the file. This is driving me nuts.

 

[RedSkies]

P.S. Ed, I'll have a look at the fdformat utility too. I didn't notice your response up there. Thanks for the suggestion.