In article ,
says...
Hello all,

I've been pulling my hair for 3 hours over this problem, so I thought
I'd ask in here, and see if people have had a similar problem.

I have an oldish (bought 08/2001) Socket A motherboard (ASUS A7V133-C).
The chipset fan was starting to whine after collecting dust for 6 months
(since I last cleaned it up). As I've done several times, I unscrewed
the chipset fan, partly lifted the sticker in the middle, put a drop of
vaseline oil on the fan's axis, and used a vacuum cleaner to make the
fan spin for a while. I did the same to the CPU fan.

Vaseline oil? Is that anything like Vasoline Petrolium Jelly? If so,
it's about the *worst* possible thing to use as a lubricant. It's
closer to a glue. Personally, I wouldn't use any lubricant on such
fans. Oil tends to attract dust.

Is that stupid? Is there a better way to treat fans when they get dirty
and start whining?

Sure, replace them. ;-) "It's dead, Jim."

Now, when I try to boot the system, all the fans start to spin for a few
seconds (it varies from 1 to 4), then everything shuts down (I hear
strange sounds in the PSU), and the POWER LED on the front panel blinks
steadily (about 1 second on, then 1 second off) as if the PC was in some
sort of deep sleep mode.

Any idea what this means?

It seems that "Power Good" isn't. That's not the fans. Either the PSU
or the motherboard is likely bad. One other thing it *could* be...
Check the voltage switch on the back of the case. Moons ago I had
problems with one that was set to 220V.

After several hours testing different combinations, I noticed that I
could boot if I unplugged my hard disk drive (uh oh!). My HDD is an IBM
Deskstar 34GXP DPTA-372050.

scratches head

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/desk/ds34gxp.htm

I don't understand how cleaning the fans could have damaged the HDD.

Coincidence. Perhaps the drive is shorted to something? ...moved in
the case, or screws too long? It wouldn't be plugged in backwards?
(I've done dumber things) ;-)

NOTE: A few weeks ago, I thought the drive was experiencing the "click
of death" (I thought it was a 75GXP, don't know if 34GXP were affected).
I downloaded the S.M.A.R.T. diagnostic tool from Hitachi, and ran it for
several hours. It found no problem with the drive.

I wouldn't think COD would cause it to short out. If the PSU won't
come/stay up, you're drawing a ton of current! ...watch the smoke. :-(

I'm hoping you guys have some suggestions for me :-)

Punt?

--
Keith