HD problems in an old DELL

[hiphop]

I picked up an old pc off a friend that I wasn't able to repair back a few
months ago. The pc is probably over 4yrs old and has a PIII I think. its
800mhz thats as much as I know because I can't get it to post to the bios at
all and there are no instruction manuals or information about the pc around
anymore.

I double check all of the connections, even took the battery off to drain
the cmos for a day. But when I turn it on the HD spins so fast it sounds
wrong, and then it clicks.

its like chung chung chung chung chung

over and over and its metal sounding.

hd ate it ?
mobo ate it ?
psu is providing to much power ? and hd still ate it ?
I'd like to try and get it up running so I can sell it off on ebay or
somewhere. But right now i'm not even sure if the chip is still working or
if the mobo is dead. I don't want to pay to find out. Can anyone help ?

-hh

 

[philo]

I picked up an old pc off a friend that I wasn't able to repair back a few
months ago. The pc is probably over 4yrs old and has a PIII I think. its
800mhz thats as much as I know because I can't get it to post to the bios at
all and there are no instruction manuals or information about the pc around
anymore.

I double check all of the connections, even took the battery off to drain
the cmos for a day. But when I turn it on the HD spins so fast it sounds
wrong, and then it clicks.

its like chung chung chung chung chung

over and over and its metal sounding.

hd ate it ?
mobo ate it ?
psu is providing to much power ? and hd still ate it ?
I'd like to try and get it up running so I can sell it off on ebay or
somewhere. But right now i'm not even sure if the chip is still working or
if the mobo is dead. I don't want to pay to find out. Can anyone help ?

-hh

the harddrive is most likely bad
and it *might* be preventing the machine from posting

disconnect the harddrive

then see if the machine posts...
if so, it may be just a matter of replacing the drive...
if it sill doesn't post...you might as well toss the thing

 

[kony]

I picked up an old pc off a friend that I wasn't able to repair back a few
months ago. The pc is probably over 4yrs old and has a PIII I think. its
800mhz thats as much as I know because I can't get it to post to the bios at
all and there are no instruction manuals or information about the pc around
anymore.

I double check all of the connections, even took the battery off to drain
the cmos for a day. But when I turn it on the HD spins so fast it sounds
wrong, and then it clicks.

It's probably, actually spinning same speed or slower, but ordinarily
you wouldn't realize by sound how fast it spins, only when the
bearing's gone will it make such a racket.

its like chung chung chung chung chung

over and over and its metal sounding.

hd ate it ?
Yep.

mobo ate it ?

Probably fine, though if it wasn't POSTing either, something else may
be up. Unplug the HDD as the previous poster suggested. The
motherboard in it is probably an Intel 440BX, 815, or similar. If you
can't get a manual from Dell then try to ID it as it's proper
Intel-name and Intel will most likely have the manual downloadable
from their website.

psu is providing to much power ? and hd still ate it ?
I'd like to try and get it up running so I can sell it off on ebay or
somewhere. But right now i'm not even sure if the chip is still working or
if the mobo is dead. I don't want to pay to find out. Can anyone help ?

-hh

A power surge might've damaged several parts, but otherwise I'd
suspect only the HDD, probably not the CPU, maybe the motherboard but
not so likley and no evidence of it's failure yet. Strip the system
down to bare essentials if necessary, just CPU, memory and video, then
see if it'll POST, and clear CMOS and try to POST again.


Dave