Is my Hard Drive Fried?

[Crispy's Critter]

I leave my desktop computer on all the time, and it usually goes into sleep mode after a while, and I wake it up by moving the mouse. I came home after work today, went to wake it up, and nothing happened. I couldn't get it to do anything, so I did the hard reboot thing (which I never do if it can be avoided), but all that happens is it sounds like the fans and everything start up, but the hard drive light just stays on steady, as if it's working constantly. The monitor never turns on, so I can't tell if it's starting at all, but since the HD light never goes off I think it's getting stuck somewhere in startup. I've tried booting from the windows CD, but it won't start from that either. I also wondered if maybe one of the vid cards is fried (running 2 cards in SLI on that machine), which was why the monitor wouldn't turn on, but that light being constantly on makes me think it's something else. Any ideas, advice, or suggestions?

TIA

[ken0042]

If the screen stays blank I would guess the motherboard is the issue. You should see the begining of something, and if your HD was fried you would get some sort of "inacessable boot device" kind of message.

Check to see if anything might be loose; like the cables for the HD, RAM, and video card. Hopefully it's something loose as opposed to something fried.

[REDVAN]

Could be the power supply.

I know it sounds weird, but this has happened to me before.

[Hack&Lube]

It's your motherboard, ram, videocard, or powersupply. It's not your harddrive. If your harddrive was damaged, your computer would still POST (power on self test) and you would get the bios info and power on screen. If it was your ram, usually would you get a set of long beeps. If if was your powersupply, your fans would spin up and then spin down but it still could be the powersupply. I'm thinking motherboard or videocard are most likely culprits.

All you can do is borrow some compatible hardware from other people and swap them in and out one at a time to isolate the troublemaker. I'm sure your harddrive is fine.

[Crispy's Critter]

thanks guys. I'll hopefully have some time to pull it apart this week, at least I have some things to look for. I'm really hoping it's something stupid like the ribbon connector coming unplugged or something.

Of course this might give me a good excuse to finally put all those computer parts I've bought off the buy and sell forum together into a new comp

ETA: since I'm running 2 vid cards, if one failed wouldn't the other one still work, or since they are in SLI are they linked to the point that neither would work if one failed?

[ericschand]

Try to remove all extras from the system. Unplug hard drive, one of the
two video cards, CD/DVD, memory, and so on. Just have the basics in the
system and try to power on.

The system only needs basic memory and one video card to POST.
You do not need any of the other stuff.

Once you get your system back start plugging stuff back in.
Start with the memory. Swap the DIMMS in and out.

If it doesn't come back, it's either the motherboard or all your
memory is shot (unlikely). You have two video cards, swap their
positions.

I suggest you make sure you are grounded with wrist strap given
the current weather, especially if you try to muck with the
memory. No wrist strap? Make sure you are touching the metal
case at ALL times. Be very very careful.

Good luck.

ers