denkencth
August 24th, 2004, 05:19 AM
My situation is this: I have 2 PCs, the main one has WinXP, the backup Win98SE (my mom uses the backup PC, but rarely). The Win98 PC has a 3 GB primary master hard drive and a 5GB primary slave hard drive (also Win98). Everything worked well until I installed my brother's hard drive. His hard drive is WinNT4 with 2GB.
His PC can't boot up ever since he unplugged it, although it was turned off at the time. It's recently been a little shaky. For example, it was normal for him to be asked for a password shortly after he turned on his PC, and he would type ALT-CTL-DEL and then go to the desktop. But he increasingly would get an error message after typing ALT-CTL-DEL, telling him to go into the BIOS. He would then exit and go to the desktop, but it wasn't the usual series of events.
Anyway, I wanted to see if his hard drive was the issue, so I removed my primary hard drive from my Win98SE PC, then placed the primary slave in the prmary master position (after I adjusted the pins on that hard drive to the 'master' position, and installed it on the end of the cable attached to the motherboard - the 'master' position), and attached my brother's WinNT hard drive in the primary slave position.
Sadly, the PC didn't boot up when I turned it on. No light or sound displayed when I pressed the power button. However, when I returned my PC to its original state, it still doesn't start - no lights or sounds. I've checked the cables and pin settings, and they're in their original positions.
My question is this: did I destroy my computer - and if so, which of the components? Is the hard drive still intact? Or is it my power supply - shouldn't I get ANY sound or a lousy green light if the power supply (and motherboard) works? I don't have another PC with a case to experiment with by replacing each component, and now I'm afraid that simply putting a non-working hard drive into a good system will destroy that system.
A few years ago, I destroyed my old motherboard by putting in what I suspected to be a bad (non-working) CPU. I really feel stupid because I should've learned how damaging broken PC components can be in an otherwise good system.
Thanks for any help you can offer. - Ken
His PC can't boot up ever since he unplugged it, although it was turned off at the time. It's recently been a little shaky. For example, it was normal for him to be asked for a password shortly after he turned on his PC, and he would type ALT-CTL-DEL and then go to the desktop. But he increasingly would get an error message after typing ALT-CTL-DEL, telling him to go into the BIOS. He would then exit and go to the desktop, but it wasn't the usual series of events.
Anyway, I wanted to see if his hard drive was the issue, so I removed my primary hard drive from my Win98SE PC, then placed the primary slave in the prmary master position (after I adjusted the pins on that hard drive to the 'master' position, and installed it on the end of the cable attached to the motherboard - the 'master' position), and attached my brother's WinNT hard drive in the primary slave position.
Sadly, the PC didn't boot up when I turned it on. No light or sound displayed when I pressed the power button. However, when I returned my PC to its original state, it still doesn't start - no lights or sounds. I've checked the cables and pin settings, and they're in their original positions.
My question is this: did I destroy my computer - and if so, which of the components? Is the hard drive still intact? Or is it my power supply - shouldn't I get ANY sound or a lousy green light if the power supply (and motherboard) works? I don't have another PC with a case to experiment with by replacing each component, and now I'm afraid that simply putting a non-working hard drive into a good system will destroy that system.
A few years ago, I destroyed my old motherboard by putting in what I suspected to be a bad (non-working) CPU. I really feel stupid because I should've learned how damaging broken PC components can be in an otherwise good system.
Thanks for any help you can offer. - Ken