Oh Great! My System Has Just Died

[K-61]

I had GWX2 installed and running fine for a few days and now my system is out of action. I mentioned a power cut I had in my house yesterday in my "battery backup" thread. I have my gaming rig connected to a UPS, but it is about three years old; I don't know if its ability to handle surges declines with time, but the battery is still fairly strong. I'll be very upset to discover it failed and let a surge through to damage my system. My wife plugged in her hairdryer yesterday and the circuit breaker for the top floor of my house triggered. My UPS began to beep, indicating that it was running on battery. I saved and exited my game, shut down the system, reset the breaker and then powered up again. I played GWX for a few more hours, then shut down and went out of town to visit my brother.

When I got home last night, my computer wouldn't boot up fully. I have some power; one of my DVD drives powers up but the other one is 100% dead. I switched power from the one that works but still nothing. I then connected the power lead from the dead drive to the working one and it powered up too, so the one DVD drive is definitely dead. There is no signal to my LCD, nor do I hear any sounds from my hard drives nor any system beeps. The front panel lights are on. So, it seems I have partial power, but not enough to get the system to POST or spin up the hard drives. My suspicion is that the power cut damaged the PSU which continued to work until I shut down the system. I have a spare PSU in my inventory, so this afternoon's project will be to connect the spare one and test the system. My worst fear is that other components are damaged. But I'll not panic until I try the PSU swap after lunch. We've got a ton of snow on the ground here in southern Ontario, so it's not as if I am going anywhere soon.

[Wolfehunter]

Originally Posted by K-61

I had GWX2 installed and running fine for a few days and now my system is out of action. I mentioned a power cut I had in my house yesterday in my "battery backup" thread. I have my gaming rig connected to a UPS, but it is about three years old; I don't know if its ability to handle surges declines with time, but the battery is still fairly strong. I'll be very upset to discover it failed and let a surge through to damage my system. My wife plugged in her hairdryer yesterday and the circuit breaker for the top floor of my house triggered. My UPS began to beep, indicating that it was running on battery. I saved and exited my game, shut down the system, reset the breaker and then powered up again. I played GWX for a few more hours, then shut down and went out of town to visit my brother.

When I got home last night, my computer wouldn't boot up fully. I have some power; one of my DVD drives powers up but the other one is 100% dead. I switched power from the one that works but still nothing. I then connected the power lead from the dead drive to the working one and it powered up too, so the one DVD drive is definitely dead. There is no signal to my LCD, nor do I hear any sounds from my hard drives nor any system beeps. The front panel lights are on. So, it seems I have partial power, but not enough to get the system to POST or spin up the hard drives. My suspicion is that the power cut damaged the PSU which continued to work until I shut down the system. I have a spare PSU in my inventory, so this afternoon's project will be to connect the spare one and test the system. My worst fear is that other components are damaged. But I'll not panic until I try the PSU swap after lunch. We've got a ton of snow on the ground here in southern Ontario, so it's not as if I am going anywhere soon.

Change your power supply. That the first to go. Hopefully nothing else burnt.
I always suggest to my friend to invest in a good powersupply even if there system is weak. IF a power failure hits a system with a high quality powersupply you have far less chance of your critical components getting burnt.

Well goodluck K-61

[K-61]

That's the thing that has me stumped. I DID have a good UPS connected to my system and it still messed up. Actually, after speaking to my wife and recounting the sequence of events, she said that the breaker tripped after she had been running the hairdryer for several minutes. It may be that the circuit breaker going off and my system dying the same day are nothing more than a freakish coincidence. I can't definitely link the two events as the computer ran fine for several hours after the breaker tripped. It was only after it had been shut down for the evening and then would not fully boot up that I guessed there might be a connection.

[K-61]

Some good news to report: After connecting a spare PSU from my inventory [OCZ 520 - peak supply: 620W] everything is working, including the DVD-ROM drive that previously wouldn't power up. It "simply" remains for me to remove the U/S unit and replace it with the functional one. My current case has the PSU compartment under the motherboard compartment, in its own bay with dedicated air flow. It's a neat case, huge but a heavy bastard. It came with its own PSU, which due to the configuration has longer cables. As the OCZ unit may not have cables long enough to reach to the top of the case I may have to swap the entire contents to my other case. Either way, I've got a bit of work ahead of me this afternoon. But that's small potatoes compared to my original horror: having to replace a motherboard and/or other expensive components.

Thank you to all who offered me advice.

[Stealth Hunter]

[Blacklight]

Double check your battery backup plug in slots. Some slots on a lot of those things offer no surge protection and are just extra outlets, while others are surge protector outlets only, while still others are surge protector+battery backup. Make sure you have your PC and monitor plugged into one of the surge+battery backup ones.