Is my computer dead?

[Francisco]

In short, today I heard a "pop" inside my computer and it immediately shut down. I smelled something burning.

I went out and bought a new PSU, installed it, and now I'm having issues getting the thing running.

Basically, I turn on the system, and the fans all start spinning - and after a minute or two it all just shuts off. To make things especially annoying, my monitor goes into power saving mode whenever it is connected to the tower, and my keyboard and mouse don't seem to be getting any power/signal from the motherboard.

Basically, I'm not sure if there's some prompt being displayed when I start up the system, and even if there is, I can't see or respond to it...

...so I have no idea what is going on.

[Sonomaa]

could have blown some capacitors on your motherboard, check them out or look for any exploded spots

[Francisco]

Everything looks normal on the motherboard. Nothing obvious, at least.

[orinthia]

Yes, it's dead. http://cdn.bluegartr.com/images/smilies/rocl.gif

Does your comp use a vid card? Does it have onboard vid to try? Have you unplugged everything and tried running bare minimum to just get a post? Can you toggle num lock to blink the light on the keyboard?

[Elizara]

I'd have it checked out by a reputable repair shop if you can't find anything wrong. It will cost you a little money but they can def tell you if it's not worth saving. But yeah, nothing on monitor might be vid card, it might be something else, like your processor got fried. It's really hard to tell, I'd have to ask my brother who's the compy tech. (I'm leaning toward video card, but I could be wrong, don't go buying one; unfortunately unless i take it to a shop, my way of figuring out what fried is to keep taking parts out and repping until it posts. Which if you don't have spares can get pricy.)

Just if you take it to a shop, tell them don't rep ANYTHING without letting you know what is wrong, you just want a diagnostic. They got tools that most people don't have to figure out what the frick is wrong with it.

[Francisco]

Yes, it's dead. http://cdn.bluegartr.com/images/smilies/rocl.gif

Does your comp use a vid card? Does it have onboard vid to try? Have you unplugged everything and tried running bare minimum to just get a post? Can you toggle num lock to blink the light on the keyboard?

No numlock or anything on keyboard... I also have a MMO mouse that lights up, but it's not lighting up.

Unfortunately, no onboard video... also, my video card's fan just decided to suddenly get very loud... I think the whole thing is shitting the bed at once, sadly.

[Artemicon]

Before you replaced the power supply would it do the same thing? Fans spin but no output, shut down after 2 minutes?

If not and you had to replace the PSU to get that far its likely that if something did go out in your PSU that it took something out with it like your MB. The only real thing you can do it replace parts at this point since your MB doesn't have an on board video out you pretty much have to start there...

[orinthia]

No numlock or anything on keyboard... I also have a MMO mouse that lights up, but it's not lighting up.

Unfortunately, no onboard video... also, my video card's fan just decided to suddenly get very loud... I think the whole thing is shitting the bed at once, sadly.

It sounds like the motherboard is fried, since even without a vid card or anything hooked up, you should still be able to blink the keyboard's num lock light while it tries to boot off lan or complain about no OS. Do you have an older pc you can swap things into? If not, and you don't want to play the "try one day and return the next" game with certain places' return policies (if you have a Fry's or similar store with full refunds, might be a douche thing to do but can help in a pinch), like the others mentioned, find a repair place to diagnose it. Just take out your hdds before hand, put back all the original stuff, and explain what you want to find out. Like extent of dmg, what all was fried, etc.

That is, if you don't want to just get a new pc right now, since it really looks like you will need to anyway. Unless you had some pricey parts you want to salvage, I have no idea. Vid card fans turning on seems like a good thing, at least it has power, but idk if the mobo possibly being fried has anything to do with the fans being on max at startup (is that normal? I know some laptops are like that, fans max on turn on then slow on windows bootup).

[Francisco]

Even the video card fan got kinda goofy and erratic sounding after a while last night. At this point, I'm just happy to salvage the (new) PSU and the contents of my hard drive. Would suck to lose all those songs, videos and por.... pictures of loved ones.

I have a USB/SATA cable, which should work according to the techie guys at MicroCenter.

Also wondering if I can use my old FFXIV discs to reinstall on a new machine. Would suck to needlessly buy another copy just for the CD codes.

[orinthia]

It's like asking if you have to buy all your steam games again because you have to reinstall steam. You're fine, they're used for your account creation only.

[Francisco]

It's like asking if you have to buy all your steam games again because you have to reinstall steam. You're fine, they're used for your account creation only.

Thanks. I thought FFXI at least was like that. I know I wound up buying several copies for various reasons.

Think I did digital download for ARR, can't remember from where though.

[Elizara]

Yeah. Make sure if you're using Windows XP or later(And I mean any operating system after that) that you have a Linux Live CD since file permissions can make you want to curse and make it so you can't read your files off the hdd on another pc most times.(Me and my brother found this out the hard way when my sis's old pc crapped the bed. He has a Linux box so we didn't bother with the cd, we just used the linux box and a FAT 32 drive to get the offending data) Linux bypasses that so you can get your files.

Also check to see where you d/led XIV from. I hope it was Steam or Amazon, they seem to be the most lenient on d/ling programs multiple times. If it was from Square directly, contact them immediately. ^^

[Twilight Sky]

If you use itunes.. you'll have to deauthorize that computer when you install it on a new one.. assuming you have no more authorizations remaining.

[Francisco]

I actually found a free copy of FFXIV, on SE's website. Didn't ask for my CD keys, just account info.

Got into FFXIV last night just fine.

Unfortunately, something else went wrong. I DL'd some Windows update, and restarted my PC. Windows failed to boot, and I had to go through Startup Repair, which didn't work. Root cause was a corrupted registry. Not sure what did this, as I was obviously doing a lot of downloading and stuff last night (nothing fancy, FFXIV, Firefox, SpeedFan... installed some drivers and software for my video card and motherboard... that's about it. Tried a few things I found with Google/Windows hotline, none worked - so I had to do a full reinstall. Hoping whatever went wrong doesn't go wrong again.