Thread: Anyone have a good knowledge of computers? Namely hardware

Does the power supply to motherboard connector look like this:
http://www.rctech.net/forum/attachme...-connector.jpg

If so, take a paperclip and short the Green Wire to one of the Black wires. It should power on. If not, replace power supply.

-Rob

Try clearing the computer of power. Put your psu back in make sure everything is plugged in correctly, also on the back of the psu there might be a little red switch to change voltage try screwing with that but anyway if not take out the cmos battery (the tiny circle battery on board) unplug the power and hold your power button for like 5-10 seconds. Then wait for 10 mins, plug it back in and try to start.

chances are the psu is dead, you can buy a decent one at like staples or something for like 50 bucks( if it doesnt fix it return it), then you know its the mobo

Also who know it could be a bad switch on the case itself, you can try finding the powerleads on the board and crossing them but if your not that computer literit i dont suggest cus you might screw something else up

Kay, so...

Not any power supply will work, it's a slimline pc so the power supply is shaped special to fit in the tiny case.

Found one on ebay for 30 bucks but it would take a week to get in, and I dont have that kind of time to risk on a maybe... I use my computer for a lot.

So I bought a new one, lol, I'll fix the old one up when I get time for it.

Next question is... I have a lot of important stuff on the hard drive for the old computer, they're both SATA drives and there's a second connection and a place to mount it inside the new case... could I just plug it in to the strip as a secondary to the one that came with the case? Am I risking anything by doing that? I see 2 plugs on the mobo, Sata0 and Sata1. I never worked with a second hard drive before.

Also, will it boot up normally and then I can select between the 2 drives like C:\ and D:\ etc, or will I have to boot into one drive at a time? What's the best way to transfer stuff between the 2 then?

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/help/...ick-on-windows

Best way would be to make a USB-bootable-Ubuntu installation. Or whatever you want to call it. Attach the secondary hard drive after making the USB stick bootable (Ubuntu). Put the USB in your new computer and boot into Ubuntu. Go to the file browser on Ubuntu and you should be able to move stuff over to the new computer. Then use another bootable program called gparted to format the old hard drive then you can use both for storage (old hard drive as a backup /fail safe).

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Xparent Red Tapatalk 2

That's what I'll probably do then, but it won't work to plug the second hdd into the sata1 port and then continue to boot into my regular main drive and just access the files through the second drive in "my computer"? I don't actually need to boot to the hdd I just want to access the data on it as a drive.

I read on Tomshardware.com that with sata systems you can do it that way but on a IDE chain you need to set master/slave.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/25...drive-computer