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Thread ID: 77078 2007-02-26 03:36:00 dead harddrive motherboard caps have corrosion - what to do Morgenmuffel (187) Press F1
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528226 2007-02-26 03:36:00 Hi all

Wifes hard drive has just died, she was working away, the computer suddenly rebooted and now no longer even acknowledges the hard drives existence

left it cool down, tried rebooting it's dead

Opened comp up and find that 3 out of a group of 5 capacitors have corrosion on the tops of them

The machine up till this point had been working fine although my wife has gone through 4 harddrives in 5 years

anyway the questions


Any tips or tricks to get the harddrive up and running to get information off it, I am going to attempt slaving it in my machine, but any other
The corrosion on the top of the caps, does this mean the board is heading wesr very shortly or will the machine continue to run for some time yet
Do they still sell those computers without keyboard mouse and monitor and possibly OS


edit
wifes machine is amd 1200 with 64mb graphic card and 512 ram and does pretty much everything she wants
Morgenmuffel (187)
528227 2007-02-26 04:11:00 So the motherboard is dead.
Doesn't mean the hard drive is.
Hook it up as slave in another PC and see if you can read it and retrieve her docs.
Of course she would have been making backups of all the really important stuff............
pctek (84)
528228 2007-02-26 04:14:00 Try clearing the CMOS first.
Remove the motherboard battery and find the CMOS jumper.
( Usually 3 pins with a jumper over two of them )
With the power unplugged put the jumper across the 2-3 pins for 30 seconds or so (assuming it was already on the 1-2 pins )
Then put it back to where is was, put the battery back in and try booting.
Also - does the mobo "beep" at all as its booting?
If it does - its probably ok and the HDD is dead.
If it doesn't - - - :(
racepics (7812)
528229 2007-02-26 05:39:00 Sounds as if motherboard is dead, (chances are the harddrive itself is ok as pctek said, try slaving it in your machine first) there was a run of motherboards made with defective capacitors (several manufacturers) at about the time your comp was put together (2003ish), caps would pop and leak brown poop, can't be repaired, would advise trying to source another m'board, maybe here:
www.checksun.co.nz
(getting very hard to find now).:(

Alternatively probably best to get a new upgrade 'box' like this:
www.pbtech.co.nz
and put your harddrive in that as a slave drive to get any data you need off it.:)
feersumendjinn (64)
528230 2007-02-26 05:58:00 Ok motherboard doesn't beep but everything else is detected and if I change the harddrive over to the same cable as the cdrom it still isn't detected,
Every other failed harddrive i have had the machine had always slowed to a crawl in boot up before coming up with a harddrive error, with this one it just doesn't exist, nothing nada zip

I have tried slaving the hard drive into my machine but the bios doesn't recognise it at all

As for backups the last backups we did were in Dec 2006, and we have just realised we have never backed up the emails at all
Morgenmuffel (187)
528231 2007-02-26 08:57:00 If you're handy and patient with a soldering iron you can replace those corroded caps. I did...and lived - so did my two mobos which are still going strong. That HD degradation is a typical symptom of bad caps on the mobo. For more info look here (www.badcaps.net/), and you can get replacement caps from JayCar (http:). Ask if you need more info.

HTH ~ John
braindead (1685)
528232 2007-02-26 09:05:00 To recover your files:
There's a very simple device that attaches to an IDE drive and connects to your other PC with USB cable. Comes with a power supply. That way you don't have to open up your other PC to disconnect & reconnect drive & power cables. And it is not expensive - under $50 - and worth having around for testing spare drives. If you can't find it at your local PC store try http://www.cdynamics.co.nz
coldot (6847)
528233 2007-02-26 13:15:00 you said you tried to slave the drive to your machine.......did you set the jumpers correctly and if so what did you set them to .....did you also plug in the IDE cable, the big flat data cable, the correct way round ?..... drcspy (146)
528234 2007-02-26 18:40:00 you said you tried to slave the drive to your machine.......did you set the jumpers correctly and if so what did you set them to .....did you also plug in the IDE cable, the big flat data cable, the correct way round ?.....
I set it to slave with master present, and the IDE cable only goes one way

but it doesn't even power up, so I am thinking it is properly dead
Morgenmuffel (187)
528235 2007-02-26 18:51:00 and the IDE cable only goes one way


Well yes it does, but it is possible to force it the wrong way.
The stripe on the cable should be the same side as the Master HDD.
And check its in tight, not slightly up at one end.........
pctek (84)
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