The PC, got two older ribbon cable hdds in the pc, master and slave.

Problem, when you switch it on it powers for a few seconds then switches off!, still got a led lit on the motherboard, but can't re switch it back on untill you switch the wall socket back off and on.

after a bit of fault finding, discovered it will power on when the power cable is disconected from the master HDD, tried another from the psu still the same.

Now my solution at the mo, is,

power the pc with the master Hdd unpluged for say 30seconds, plug the power back into the master hdd, and hit the reset button, the pc then powers up all correctly?

and im using it to post this!


So is it dying? or is there a fix?

(ive backed up my pictures and ie favorites to the slave )

 

could be the power supply dying ? not being able to give enough power to the motherboard so it shuts down automatically.

 

I've never seen a HD with those symptons, but i suppose it is possible. I'm would at first go down the power supply route, you say you've checked it with a different power lines from the PSU with no difference. What about unplugging your slave HD and DVD/CD Drives/ floppy drive etc so no power is going to them. basically all thats being fed from the PSU is the board and the potentially faulty HD. Does it work now?

Also I'd be wanting to try the HD in another PC, just chuck it in as a slave on a mates PC if you can, does it have the same problem or is it fine?

 

had it running just that hdd on start up, still the same, going to try and borrow, a power supply, to give that ago?

 

Maybe change the drives around, set the master to slave and the slave to master, or maybe even cable select ? Then reset the bios to default settings and re-configure accordingly, then maybe go down the power supply route, what other ide devices have you got ? cd-rom / dvd drives ?

 

a dvd rw drive, tho currently unpluged.

bois on stuff, aint gotta clue, so will try a psu when i get to borrow one, then if that fail a mess with the bois?

 

got a new psu, well spare 3 week used one off a mate FOC, all up and running ok again