Help trouble shooting a HP I was given.

[Oneslowz28]

My mothers friend brought me an older HP yesterday because she bought a laptop. She bought the laptop because the HP quit. My gut is that it got struck by lightening while she was on vacation.

It is a 2000 or 2001 HP pavilion model (per her purchasing date) It came loaded with Win Millennium and was upgraded to HP shortly after. It has a celeron inside based on the sticker on the case. I can not verify this though as I have not pulled the cooler. The cooler is an aftermarket cooler master (has a cooler master fan on it) but still looks like a stock one.

I tried to power it on but got nothing. So I take out the PSU to trouble shoot that first. I jumped the green and black wire and the PSU came on. Checked with a multimeter and all the pins are getting the right voltage.

Checked the power switch for continuity when pressed. Its good.

Then I plugged it all back up just to make sure it was not a loose connection. The this time upon plugging in the power cable to the back of the PSU the cpu fan came on. The computer did not boot up however. Just the CPU fan came on. The HDD did not spin up or anything.

I reseated the ram, checked all the caps, took out all add on cards (network and 56k modem) and unhooked the Optical and HDD. Still no boot up.

I take the PSU out and hook up a spare I have. The CPU fan does not come on this time. I hook the original PSU up and the CPU fan still did not come back on. I tried this several more times and could not duplicate the previous fan running anomaly.

I took the HDD out and threw it in my linux box and it could not see the HDD. I checked the jumper and it was in the right spot. I tried it again in my main rig with a ubuntu live cd and still could not detect the HDD. It did spin up both times though. Its not much of a loss. She had no photos on it and only used the box to browse the net and play casino games.

With the odd power issues and the HDD being bad I am guessing that this box got hit by lightening.

Did I miss anything?

[slaveofconvention]

Only other thing I'd try before giving up (and to be honest with something this old I'd probably have already given up) is remove everything except the PSU and motherboard - CPU, Ram, Drives, Cards, everything. It won't post - not in a million years, but if the board is even partially working, you should get an impressive array or error beeps.

EDIT - Make sure the motherboard HAS an active speaker connected to the headers, or built onboard - or you won't get any beeps no matter what LOL

I know that's blatently stating the obvious, but I've been doing this kinda thing for almost 15 years and I STILL forget stupidly obvious things occasionally....

[Luke122]

Depending on the age of the HP, it could be using a proprietary pin out configuration on the PSU. Dell used to do that also, and though the connector was the same, you'd cook the mobo by using an aftermarket PSU.

The coolermaster cpu fan is most likely the stock one, as I've seen a few HP's that use them.

As mentioned above, ensure a speaker is connected, and strip the board right down. Error beeps? Good... if not, board is toast.

Add cpu, repeat. Add ram, repeat. Add video, repeat.

You said you put the hdd into another box and got nothing.. was the hdd recognized by the bios? If not, check the hdd jumpers for position.. older systems tended to be set for master/slave rather than cable select. In fact, some older hard drives would ONLY recognize if set to master or slave, despite the ability to set them for cable select.

[Oneslowz28]

I verified that the HDD was dead. I am now also 100% positive that it got hit by lightening. I pulled the modem and it had some charring around a few traces near the input and then I pulled the back of the Mobo and there was a few nice black places on it too. Its no loss to me or to the lady. It only had a 15gb HDD and 128mb of ram. The case is still good. A bit small for my taste but still good non the less.

[Eclecticos]

Discard the damaged goods, and remove them from your collection.

[dr.walrus]

I verified that the HDD was dead. I am now also 100% positive that it got hit by lightening. I pulled the modem and it had some charring around a few traces near the input and then I pulled the back of the Mobo and there was a few nice black places on it too. Its no loss to me or to the lady. It only had a 15gb HDD and 128mb of ram. The case is still good. A bit small for my taste but still good non the less.

Unlikely to be lightning - a lightning strike would normally melt half the wiring in your house, and destroy most of your electrical equipment. Easy way to know this is to ask her how many fuses she had to replace.

This isn't really relevant in the US, but living in the UK I've fixed a lot of PCs over the years with localised burns on the PCBs that have been caused by the power supply being switched from 230v to 110v while plugged into a 230v supply. Children always wonder what that switch does...

I'm guessing a faulty PSU or extreme power surge, but again, normally wouldn't be isolated to one device if the problem wasn't related directly to the PC.

I concur with the above advice. Use a heat gun to melt the components off the motherboard and make yourself a nice mousemat.

[FuzzyPlushroom]

If it's charred around the phone port on the modem and behind the motherboard, it seems to me like the phone line got hit outside the house somewhere, but the house itself didn't. Lightning has been known to take out computers through phone cables (into dial-up modems) as well as through the power lines. At the very least, it struck a pole or something and caused a serious power surge through her phone line.

Test the expansion cards, memory, optical drive, and such in other machines; hang the motherboard on your wall.

[Oneslowz28]

I am putting the cpu in my collection, using the optical and hdd as mock up pieces. Going to remove the main connector (it is a standard atx style) and use it for a psu jumper. The case is going to be used to house the p4 linux rig I have in another huge beige case.

[x88x]

If it's charred around the phone port on the modem and behind the motherboard, it seems to me like the phone line got hit outside the house somewhere, but the house itself didn't. Lightning has been known to take out computers through phone cables (into dial-up modems) as well as through the power lines. At the very least, it struck a pole or something and caused a serious power surge through her phone line.

Yup, I've seen this quite a few times. This is why you always want to make sure EVERYTHING is surge-protected, not just the power.

[1RealTruth]

I have to admin, I got tired of reading the posts after half way through this thread. Not because I was bored but because I wanted to add my comments.

Forget about the jumpers. They are obviously still set the same as when the computer was purchased. You should always try the easy things first. If they worked before it died the way it was, then it should still work minus the hardware problems.

HP power supplies will test good but that doesn't mean they are good. Recently I tested about 20 HP power supplies that came out of HP TC2120 Tower Servers and they all tested good but when you put them in the system, all you get is an amber light and a fan spinning.

slaveofconvention and several other people had the right idea. Remove everything and boot the computer. If it's working correctly, you should get a lot of post-up beeps. Most of my customers during the 2000-2005 period had HP computers and several had this same problem. Sometimes it was the processor went bad, most of the time it was the power supply. Only 3 out of about 50 power supplies during that time, actually tested bad but around 30 tested good but turned out being bad.

Smell the back, if it smells like cigarettes, the person probably smoked too much. If it smells like transistors, then something got fried.

[x88x]

a) it's only 9 comments, RTFM
b) if you finished reading the comments, you would have seen that the issue was resolved
c) *runs to get billygoat's zombie thread shotgun*

[slaveofconvention]

This isn't the only old resolved thread that this guy revived - but he's brand new to the forum so give him a little slack - hopefully he'll get notified that there's been more posts since his and he'll realise he should have checked the last post date before adding to the comments :)