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Hardware Failure

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by dnme

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Recently a machine was brought in to us which failed to boot from any h/w source. The drives were each removed from the PC and tested individually on a working PC. Each except the HD worked. When the original HD was returned, the failed HD was addedto see if it could be accessed/seen - it could not. On removing it and rebooting, the working PC failed to boot just as the first failed PC did. It appeared that no power was going to the Drives. (PC 1 - FD, HD, CD => PC 2 - HD, CD (Draw would not open))

Question: Is it possible that a virus is the cause of this by residing in the BIOS/RAM

if not, then what??
if so, is there a known solution???

12 replies

by johnm

The best guess, from the info supplied, would be that the initial HD has failed in a way that causes it to kill the power supply of whatever computer it is put into. Probably involves shorting one of the voltages to the case, which you might be ableto detect with an ohmmeter. Have you checked power supply voltages? Any noises, smells or dimming lights before failure of the second computer?

by drdmc

The hard drive probably has a short which blew the fuse(s)in the power supplies.

by tech/admin

The MAGISTR virus which is going around at this moment does rewrite the Flash Memory and BIOS of a machine. From all that I can gather this renders the machine unbootable. I am not sure how you would repair the flash ram chip, you might need a replacement. (MotherBoard)

by tech/admin

You could flash from a floppy if the bios sees the drive, if it does not how are you going to use a floppy. Flash Ram is not the bios, it is an eprom on the motherboard.

by penny_lee_candy

Back to Basics. If you didn't have the proper testing equipment for "TESTING ALL THE DRIVES", and you risked installing a damaged hard drive into another "Working MACHINE" you should have expected it to damage the working PC. I quote here, I see this picture of a man plugging a defective lamp into all the outlets in the house-- Then wondering why all the fuses are blown out!!

The smartest way remove all drives from the bad system, install a known working floppy drive. As most BIOS boot from the floppy drive. The system
should see the floppy and the BIOS can be FLASHED with a clean copy this way
if a virus had corrupted it.
The FDD controller and HDD controller on both systems should be tested
for damage. If one or both have damage it may be possible to install another
Combined IDE Controller /w FDD support. But no one wants a defective machine!

If the HDD or FDD controller are onboard "Part of the mother board" replace
the mother board, Test the power supply and install working drives.

by chris hirst

The failed HD may have corrupted the BIOS settings for the IDE, a CMOS reset may clear this, or it could have blown the IDE channel (unlikely), The PSU problem could be that the PSU has shut down, and one way to restart them is to put a load across 12V +ve (yellow cable) and 0V (black) on a drive connector, a car (auto) headlight lamp is ideal (12v 50\55w) then short out the PSU start pins (green & violet on the ATX block) then put mains onto the PSU and short out again, if the supply is ok itshould start up

by dnme

Thanks for ur input - IDE Blown, will try to remember this one though :|

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