On 2 Apr 2004 12:00:41 -0800, (Max) wrote:

hey guys- i'm in a serious predicament here.

i was installing a cd-rw drive the other day into my Dell Dimension
4100 and i got it working perfectly. however, i turned my computer on
before i fully screwed the drive in to the drive bracket. so while the
computer was on, i removed the drive bracket and proceeded to screw in
the drive. it was out of total laziness that i didn't turn the
computer off- a big mistake. so the computer, while i was handling the
drive inside the case, went off, and wouldn't turn back on. absolutely
no response from the power button.

If you were guessing, what would you guess happened? Was there something
specific you were doing when it turned off?
Any chance it has a chassis intrusion switch that's not being held down
with the cover anymore?

Does "no response" include not even a slight movement of the power supply
fan? You might have to be looking right at the fan when you press the
button.

Have you tried disconnecting the power supply from AC for a few minutes?


so i called dell and we ran some diagnostics (unplug everyting from
the motherboard and plug it all back in, switch power cables with the
monitor, etc.) and they decided to send me a new power supply. i got
it this morning and installed it- still no power to the computer. a
few questions:

could i have killed the motherboard?

Sure, it's possible, but not from simply screwing a bracket to a drive...
had to be something more to it than that. If you're really, really
unlucky, or were talking to the tech-from-hell, they might've sent you a
dead power supply.

If you have the ability, test the power supply. There are numerous guides
on the net showing the pinout of a standard ATX power supply. If yours
has this standard pinout then you can short the PS_On line to ground (pin
14 to any black wire in the following picture with a paperclip or piece of
wire), with the power supply disconnected from the motherboard, and it
should turn on, fan spinning. Here's an aide:
http://69.36.189.159/usr_1034/atx_on.gif

If you happen to have a multimeter you could also take voltage readings.

If the power supply IS standard, but won't turn on, try the other one. If
it will turn on, reexamine the wires for the drive(s), anything else you
might've disturbed while inside the case. If/when everything looks ok, if
the system still won't turn on then use the Clear-CMOS jumper or remove
battery from board, while AC power is disconnected from the power supply.

is all my data (i have 2 hard drives) safe? the computer turned off
pretty quickly, no errors or anything crazy like that.

Unless the drive was being written to, it's probably fine.

is it possible, if it's the motherboard that is dead rather than the
power supply, that the old power supply may still be good?

Yes, it's possible... It's likely that one part of the other is fine,
though it'd depend on exactly what happened I suppose.

roughly how much does a new motherboard cost from dell?

Don't know but I'd ballpark it at $160... too much. If you have a tech
savy friend nearby with some spare parts s/he might be able to assist.
It'd be helpful to isolate the problem before continuing to buy more
replacement parts.