Power Supply Puzzle

[arisaa]

Hello to all.

I face the following frustrating situation :

I installed a network card (ethernet) to my pc. Turned on the pc but i had forgotten to connect the floppy drive. I shut it down and connected the floppy. Then i could not turn on the pc. No power at all. I took a look at the cables and they had power. I inspected my psu (4 years old) and it was all covered with a thick layer of dust. I said ok, dead psu. I bought a new one and installed it. The pc would not boot it just produced continuous long beeps. I took off the memory chip and put it back again. The pc turned on normally but a few seconds later it turned off by itself. Tried to turn it on again, no power at all. I took off the network card. Tried 10 times to turn the pc on, same results no power. I thought that the new psu died too due to some mysterious reason. Tried one last time and - miracle- the pc turned on and now seems to be operating normally.

Do you have any ideas on what is going on ?

Could the network card have induced all these problems ? I really need to install it and setup a small network.

Any help would be more than appreciated.

Many thanks in advance. :( :eek: :confused:

PS. The 3.3 voltage value is kind of low : 3.17 volts

[AllGamer]

I don't think the NIC can have caused all that trouble

when you get beeps is either Video, or RAM that are loose.

does it work if you put the NIC back in?

maybe try it on another PCI slot

you might have a Defective PCI slot

[arisaa]

Thanks Allgamer. I'll try another slot.

[G Ray88]

It sound like you need a can of air, to blow out all of the dust bunnies out of the computer, try removing the memory chips and blowing out the slots, then replace the memory, check all connections. The Network card shouldn't have caused all those problems as AllGamer stated, if the computer still has problems you may want to get your memory checked. Good Luck:t

[Sterling_Aug]

Have you tried clearing the CMOS yet? Maybe a setting got corrupted and resetting it will get the motherboard booting again.

[arisaa]

Yes I did clear the CMOS but I can't tell if this helped since the power problem continued for a while after that.

Anyway i installed the NIC in a different pci slot and everything seems to be normal for the time being.

Thank you all very much for replying.

[AllGamer]

hmm... so that other PCI slot did in fact seems to have been acting up a bit.

G Ray88 said, it might just be dirty.

or maybe something as simple as IRQ not sharing properly.

but that's besides the point, the important thing is that it works now.

and try that clean up as suggested, that might help in the future :t

[arisaa]

Well, I was cleaning everything else except the psu. Never thought about it.

I'm still wondering though, can the Bios prohibit the psu from turning on if something is going wrong ?

Thanks again

[AllGamer]

no certainly the BIOS can not prevent the PSU from powering on

heck you can even Power on the PSU without the mobo

:D

[Slade54]

You said it wouldnt power up after you pluged your floppy back in.

Ive had problems where if the floppy (or HD) wherent pluged in right, it wouldnt power up until i fixed it.

Just a thought

[germanjulian]

yeah i remember now! my floppy cable i think was loose!
i installed a new PSU and it wouldnt start! MAN I WAS SCARED!
then i made sure everything is connected correctly and tadaaaaaaaa it works!

[Baddog]

Originally posted by arisaa
Hello to all.

I face the following frustrating situation :

I installed a network card (ethernet) to my pc. Turned on the pc but i had forgotten to connect the floppy drive. I shut it down and connected the floppy. Then i could not turn on the on

Disconnect the floppy see if it will power up . If so, problem is with the floppy, you may have bent a pin, cable on backwards, or you may have switched the mouse and the keyboard connections if you had taken them loose.