PC won't power up!

[maconsol]

I have an HP Pavilion 4540. About two days ago I tried to upgrade my hard drive. The upgrade was a drive that was new but unused for the past six months.

When I installed it I had the jumper set to master, and it was the only hard drive on IDE channel 1, i.e., the exact same configuration as the hard drive I was replacing. Lo and behold, when I connect it and try to switch on the machine, all the drives (CDRW, FDD and HDD) power on but nothing happens after that, no beep codes, no diagnostic screen. I tried the cableselect jumper on the new hard drive next with the same results.

I put the new hard drive down as faulty and put the old one back. Now with the PC in its original configuration I still can't power up.

I've found that by disconnecting the IDE cable from the hard drive I can get the PC to start, then I just make sure I plug in the cable before the BIOS finishes counting RAM-- not a very good solution but it works 20% of the time.

I've already tried replacing the CMOS battery and "resetting configuration data" from the BIOS with no positive results.

If anyone has got some constructive suggestions I'd be interested to hear them as I am completely stumped!

Thanks in advance,

Richie de Almeida

 

[Comtech]

Flip the IDE cable around and put it on the other way. Cheers,
Jim
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[maconsol]

Sorry! The IDE cable is idiot-proofed (lucky for me!) with a notch on one side to prevent putting it in the wrong way.

 

[edfair]

What is on the other end. Wiggling cables tends to lift one end partially off the connector. And on boards without guides you can get one pin off or a row off and never see it. Would suspect maybe one end up since it is seeable part of the time. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

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.

 

[Guest_imported]

did you replace the cable the cable might be bad

 

[maconsol]

Both ends are notched and they're pushed in all the way.

The strangest thing is that the hard drive only has to be disconnected while I'm trying to get the BIOS to start up. Once the BIOS is going I plug the hard drive back in and everything boots up fine!

I forgot to mention that I replaced the cable when I first encountered the problem, since I can get operational once the BIOS wakes up, I think that rules out the cable.

 

[edfair]

How about going back to basics. Reset boot order to floppy, c: and set for no hard drive. Verify that it comes up w/ floppy boot.. then add c: back in drive type and let it attempt to floppy boot again. Give it maybe 10 minutes to figure it out. Seem to remember pavilion as longer delay than other machines. If it finds it fdisk should see a partition. Set drive for auto detect.
What results from the bios autodetect? and what results if you disconnect the cd from secondary controller and plug the drive there?
Will the bios autodetect the cd if you put it on the primary channel as master? Seems a detection problem there.
Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

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.

 

[alex304]

One other thing you might want to check on is the jumper setting...some HDD (like Western Digital) have different settings for MASTER and Stand Alone. Stand Alone on some WD HDD is "no jumpers." I have experience that some computers won't fully boot if the jumper settings are wrong.

Alex

 

[jakrabit]

especially if you have 2 ide devices on the same controller... if they are BOTH jumpered as the same (ie. master and master or slave and slave) they will compete with each other for who is Master (or slave) and will not allow the computer to post to the BIOS...