I need help with my home PC. I left it switched on last night and this morning the red and green light are permanently on, with no picture to the monitor. I can hear the fan but not the hard disk whirring. The reset button has no effect. It has been suggested that the power supply to the hard disk has failed. What should I do?

 

Is the light on your CD rom flashing when you start the pc after a few seconds if it is try the power from the harddisk in the CD rom to see if it still lights up, if it does it could be a seized harddisk, try changing the IDE lead aswell because if this is at fault the Harddisk wont power up.

Sean

 

It sounds to me like its gone to sleep and crashed.

Often the reset switches are "smart" so they will not work.

I would turn it off at the mains and turn it back on again. The only thing you can damage by doing this is the disk drive, which sounds like its asleep anyway.

If youve got a component failed it will then show up at bootup

robski

 

If its a later motherboard you dont need to go straight for the mains switch.

Just hold the power switch in for ten seconds or so and it should turn itself off.

then put it back on see what the damage is.

 

Have you got a super duper virus checker/utility - brings them to death's door sometimes if left on for long periods.

 

If the hard disk has failed, the computer will still go through the BIOS bootup routine (where you see messages about how much RAM you have, maybe some graphics card info too) up to the point that it hands over control to the O/S, at which point it will fail. It would probably even beep a few times and tell you that it's failed.

Switch it off completely (at the wall socket) then switch it back on again. If it's still doing it, then it's most likely a motherboard failure. Might not be terminal, it could be a shorting connection or something loose.