I have an Amd Duron 900 w/320 MB SDRAM,10Gig Western Digital HD. I am trying to pinpoint an power up error. No video, hard drive doesnt power up when fully connected(remove the ide cable,HD powers up normal). I purchased a new motherboard, thinking something was fried on my old one, and I have the same exact problem. I have tried a different HD(even ide cables). All of which work great in my much slower pc(even my memory). My sister had a problem with her pc powering up so I was looking at it. Her pc eventually started up no problem so I used her power supply on mine and got the same results(however I don't know if her problem was due to a faulty power supply). I removed a cpu from a pc and turn it on, the hard drive powered up fine, so I tried it on mine ,no HD power up. So I'm down to either my power supply or cpu, and I'm low on cash. Thats about everything.

Start from a known good point which you never mention that you did. With only the video card connected [cpu/ram/pw supply all in] do you get video??? Do you get the bios screen? Clearly your power supply is not the issue. You can not assume that because you hear the drive spin up with the ide cable is not connected that the hd is good. Spin up means nothing except the motor works. If you get the bios screen with nothing connected but the video card then you know all related components are working. Add one thing at a time like floppy drive, hard drive, cdrom, and whatever cards you want to add until the system stops working. This is the break point. It is very common to have the ide cable reversed when connected to the hd and not have the system come up at all. After all you have created a short and the mainboards are smart enough now not to put power thru and blow the mainboard.

Hi Here is the old thread http://computing.net/hardware/wwwboard/forum/19837.html Well here at least here there is some postitive information. The HD spin up test with no ide cable was important. It establishes that there isn't a power issue to the drive. In the previous message - I was completely baffled. As my last post indicates. I just haven't seen a functional drive not power / spin up whilst other devices work. Hmmmm but it does spin up with the ide cables removed. That makes a whole lot more sense. OK wanderer has sumed up the power supply - its pretty safe to conclude its fine. Is it your cables in wrong. Well in the last thread you stated all was fine until one day... So the configuration was working. You are experinced enough to know how to set master/slave, I expect. I assume you're not using the cs [cable selet] option - because you need a different ide cable usually - and you havn't mentioned it. So basically when you plug the hard drive into the ide controller, the machine has difficulties. I have asked if the drives worked elsewhere. (But I meant if they powrered up then) They do? Well now I'd like you to see if you have the WD drive as master on the problematic machine, try the same drive as master on the computer you used before to test it. Then get a copy of disk diagnostic from WD, and run it on the going computer with the WD drive in. Are there any errors reported by the diagnostic?

Hey anenefan, The pc I am using now is my secondary pc,its my old one. Specs are AMD K6-2 300MHZ w/192MB SDRAM. I only had 1 HD per pc, and I am using my main drive in this pc since it is better. So, both my HD's work with no errors in this pc. Neither one powers up in my main pc(unless ide cable is unpluged). Cables and mas/sla jumpers are all in the proper positions. Since I started posting I have been doing numerous tests, I have been having problems just starting the pc at times. My secondary pc has an Aristo AM-571 motherboard which has AT and ATX but I cant find a jumper anywhere to switch between (Couldnt even find anything on the manual). Anyway I removed my power supply from main pc and tried to power up my secondary and got nothing. One thing I did was remove the cpu and it powered up but only for say 5 seconds. I will be borrowing another pc from my bro tomorrow and I will test my video card and power supply and if they work in his pc, I am left with only the cpu, and no-one I know has a socket 462 cpu for me to install to test. And as I said in a prior message, I already purchased a new motherboard, and I dont want to think that this new motherboard has the same problem as my other one(providing that the problems lie within the motherboard. And no it wasnt mounted. I just dont have the cash to buy more parts that wont fix the problem,and while this pc isnt bad, I record music with my other one. I will let you know results of the tests I will be doing tomorrow night. Thanks

Tests show power supply was cause cause of hard drive power up issues. The lack of video is due to a bad cpu.

Hi Glad the problem is sorted. Next (very) Sorry I seem to have lost the plot when I got to response #10 in the last thread and I had forgotten from there on what what you said for a start...(like you had already done the spin up test). From #10 I focused only on the hard drives, and dare I say it, I got caught by "determined it must be" syndrome.