System does not startup

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flipboi15

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okay, so i will start from the beginning. I have a fairly old computer and I bought a graphics card for it (ati hd4730 to be exact). I did not know that this video card needs to be connected to a 6pin PCI-E, so i bought a molex 4pin to 6pin adapter. there's 1 6pin end and 2 4pin ends.

I plugged both the 4pins and turned on my machine but nothing appeared but a black screen (i knew it was connected because it did not say no signal) and my hard drive did not sound like it was spinning. I forgot to mention that i have a 500W PSU. When i unplug the 4 pins from the adapter, my hard drive would start up and if i was lucky and reconnected it, my windows would start with the monitor connected to the graphics card but it would freeze and if i restarted the computer it would restart then go back to the black screen.

I was messing around with the power cables while the computer was still on and i think i short circuited my hard drive because my windows would not start up anymore even with the Onboard Graphics connected to my monitor, please help me. I have 2 problems but right now i want to know if i can fix my hard drive cuz i had some important things in it. thanks.
 
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rolli59

rolli59

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Power cables are not hot plug able! It is more likely that you damaged something else than the HDD. I suggest that you take the card out of the computer (WITH THE SYSTEM OFF!) plug everything in properly and reset BIOS (pull mobo battery for a few sec) and then try again.
 
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flipboi15

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is there a way i could find out if nothing else is damaged? like turn it on without a hard drive? i have 2 hard drives and i think they are old but none of them boot up. one of them would kill my PSU once it was connected. and the other would spin up but later die on. I am getting a better PSU tomorrow, so im pretty sure my PSU is toasted, how do i know if nothing else is toasted ?
 
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flipboi15

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Ok since im here ill try to get full help.

motherboard: p5vd2-vm se
cpu: intel core duo

I am buying these tomorrow.
Western Digital Caviar 200GB SATA-150 8MB CACHE
OCZ PowerStream 520W ATX12V V1.3 BTX 24PIN (Low Noise) Power Supply

Would this get my computer up and running with the graphics card i bought? Powercolor HD4730
 
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flipboi15

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ok, with my hard drives not booting it was because the CMOS battery was not put on properly.... my system boots but it gets stuck at the motherboard splash screen, does this mean i have a bad mother board ? i do not have speakers for the motherboard.
 
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flipboi15

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Ok i resetted the CMOS again and i can boot up bios and i tried this broken hard drive i had that still spun and i got the error "Reboot and select proper boot device"

So im guessing my motherboard and CPU are safe :D ?

So if i buy a new hard drive and a new PSU I can pretty much use my card right ?

Oh wow, things are looking better now. My hard drive booted up for some reason, my old one! WOW! im really in shock right now.
 
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flipboi15

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if you didnt catch my last edit, my old hard drive booted up but I think its corrupted because it asks me if i want to to boot to last saved settings and when i chose that i saw the windows xp loading screen, but the hard drive would reset back. Can I reuse the hd and re-install os on it, or is it fried ?
 
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flipboi15

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now that that is clear, can we safely say that if i got a new hard drive (i am in need of a new one anyways) and a decent power supply, I can get my computer running with the GPU ?

Can you tell me what happened? why my hard drive didnt run because the power cable was plugged into the video card? my old PSU was a no name 500W that did not support 6pin PCIE plug in the first place. will replacing that with a OCZ PowerStream 520W ATX12V V1.3 BTX 24PIN make it work finally ?

or does it simply mean that i failed and my gpu was not compatible from the get go.
 
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flipboi15

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the gpu worked earlier and showed display, i managed to do that by tricking the motherboard. before i gave power to the GPU, i made sure the hard drive was spinning first and sometimes my system ran with the GPU display. lol
 
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rolli59

rolli59

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Which somewhat points to the PSU!
 
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flipboi15

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i agree its pretty old plus its 2nd hand. what are the chances of it not having enough juice? does psu lose its power over time?
 
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flipboi15

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ok im past that part. I am now trying to install Windows XP SP3 that came with my machine. The problem is that it keeps BSOD'ing. I have gotten as far as 100% on copying files with no error then when it was in the process of installing it at around 2-3% it BSOD'ed on me. What could it be? Please dont tell me it is a bad motherboard...please..

also my CMOS keeps getting reset ? It always says Press F1 for setup or F2 for default.
 
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