hello , im new to this forums and by reading a few posts i noticed how knowladgable all the people in this forums are .

I need your help , and this is why ,

i build a computer for my dad long time ago and the specs were like this:
p4 1.6 ghz , 1 gig sdram , 80 gig hard drive abit mobo , 300 watt power supply , 2 days ago my dad called me over to show me that the fans (case and cpu) were constantly on , and when you pressed the power button it would not do anything , so i try unplugging it , and when i reconnected the cpu the fans would come on again with the same symptoms , so i assumed it was a fried mobo , bough a new one (abit k7) and slaped in there with some ddr 2700 memory , (1 gig) and another video card , when i pluged the power cord in , nothing . same results as before , fans come on , and the light on the mobo is on ,even both light in the front of the case are on (power and HD) and i made sure to connect all the cables to the mobo , ,

so i took out everything one by one , with the same results .

i even took out the cpu , and nothing .

no beeps , and the fans wont turn off even if i hold the power button .

could this be a bad cpu ? another fried mobo ? or maybe the power supply is not sending enough power ? any help is appreciated in advance

your truly , Robert

welcome venom to dal the online computer help forum
i think your psu should be ok if it has been running ok for quite a while although they are not exspensive you can always go up to something like 460 just to make sure
some questions:

has your dad installed any thing new lately?

have you updated your graphics card drivers recently as this can lead to power spikes?

pleae come back to me

hope this helps

i think its a bad power supply, try going with a trusted brand like enermax, though it is more expensive then generic PSU. since he basically swamped all except PSU, try it. Because Im assuming its current a generic PSU that probably came with your case?

Thanks for all the good help from you guys , it was indeed the powersupply.

So i instaled a new mobo , and tried to boot up the computer , to my surprise it said ti was missing an operative system (nbdrv something) so i told my dad that an over voltage from the faulty power supply probably caused the hard drive to erase (dont know if this is true but it sounded posible) so i recommended that he got windows reinstalled .

so i put the old mobo back on there , and tried to boot up the computer with the same results ("system boot up failure , try using the windows xp cd and press r to repair") .

I went to the setup window and made sure both hard drives were listed on the bios , and they were .

Then i poped in the windows xp cdrom and went on to install windows xp again.

When windows tried to load up the files to install it , it said it could not loadup a file and it gaved me error 4 first , and then error 7 in the following attempts .

I checked all the cables and they seem to be connected right .

Any suggestions ?

All help is appreciated and thanks for your previous answer

did the error happen on just the master? did you try to swamp HD to see if it was the HD problem?

do you suggest i take one out and try that way? ,i will try that tommorow