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  1. Member
    Join Date
    Apr 2002
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    The State of Frustration
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    My first adventure into the world of computer troubleshooting and repair.

    Problem: Computer power light would come on, but hard drive would click a few times then nothing. If left alone for a few days the computer would boot normally, as if nothing was wrong. But after a few hours of computing, if I reboot, the issue remained (power light on, a few hard drive clicks, then nothing).

    My research said the hard drive clicks usually means a bad hard drive, so I bought a new one, ordered the recovery disks and created a new "C:" drive. Unfortunately, the new drive had the same issue, so the hard drive wasn't the issue.

    I called my computer's tech support, but they said to pay them $59.99 up front and they would troubleshoot over the phone for me, though they promised to refund the fee if they were unsuccessful. I held back a laugh, and politely refused.

    So I went back into my CPU to see if there were any more clues. It turns out no matter how long my computer was on, if I disconnected the power from the DVD drive and left only the hard drive and motherboard connected to the power supply, the computer would boot.

    So back to Best Buy to get a power supply. Installed it, and it's working great!
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  2. Banned
    Join Date
    Oct 2004
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    Freedonia
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    I work in IT for a living. Mostly I do Unix/Linux system admin on servers, but I've done a fair bit of PC repair at home and at work. I've seen a ton of problems, some quite bizarre, that were solved by replacing the power supply. You learned a valuable lesson that will serve you well for the future.
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  3. You used process of elimination and that is good. Normally the click of death would mean a bad hard drive, but you found out it was a voltage problem. By replacing the power supply, you were able to get it working. You did a very good job.
    Believing yourself to be secure only takes one cracker to dispel your belief.
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  4. Member
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    Apr 2002
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    The State of Frustration
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    Thanks guys. I still want to keep my new hard drive, but Best Buy doesn't sell the hardware to install. There is a store near work that does, so I'll look into it Monday.
    Last edited by Tommyknocker; 2nd Mar 2014 at 12:48.
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  5. Member p_l's Avatar
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    Jun 2002
    Location
    Montreal, Canada
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    It's not a Dell Optiplex 755 or 760, is it? Coincidentally, the power supply on one of mine just crapped out tonight. Not sure, but it looks like that Dell l305p power supply is non-standard, right?
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  6. Member
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    Apr 2002
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    The State of Frustration
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    No, it's a Compaq CQ5210.
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  7. Member
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    Apr 2002
    Location
    The State of Frustration
    Search Comp PM
    Update: Computer still runs great. Installed the extra hard drive, but it took over my "G:" designation that I use for my "Tony the Terabyte" 1TB external drive. But another Internet search shows how easy it is to rename hard drives. So all is well!
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