So the other day, there was a surge of power or something. My computer shut down and wouldn't turn on again. It smelled smokey afterward.

I got a new power supply (the same brand and power: Thermaltake 430 W). My computer loads like usual and then gets to the Windows XP loading screen. It tries to load on that screen for about 10-20 seconds then the screen goes blank.

Keep in mind that I built myself this computer ~2 years ago.

Is my computer done-fer ?

Thanks,
The Dude

9/26/2008 3:15:50 PM

Something else is probably fucked and your computer crashes when Windows tries to initialize its driver.

9/26/2008 4:00:16 PM

could it be the motherboard? hard drive? RAM? everything?

My guess is the hard drive because BIOS and everything runs fine.

[Edited on September 26, 2008 at 9:06 PM. Reason : yo]

9/26/2008 9:03:41 PM

The only option would be to format a harddrive and to reinstall windows on it. You can still recover your data from your other harddrive (assuming it didn't die) by using it as a secondary harddrive and copying the data from it.

9/27/2008 12:43:24 PM

You really need to not give advice in tech talk ever again.

9/27/2008 1:12:45 PM

I doubt it's the hard drive. If it were, you should get a blue screen when Windows is loading or it would just reboot.

It's more likely to be the graphics card, chipset on the motherboard, or the RAM.

If you've only got the one computer to work with, remove all the devices (including USB) from the computer and just leave the graphics card, 1 stick of RAM, keyboard, and the hard drive attached. If it still won't boot, I'd try moving the graphics card to a different slot or try another graphics card. If that doesn't work, try swapping out the RAM.

If there's something wrong with the chipset on the motherboard, you can have RAM slots, PCI slots, etc. that don't work or possibly none of them will work correctly.

If you've got another computer to mess with, you can try your devices in the other computer. That'll make it easier to determine if the problem is with the motherboard.

9/27/2008 3:05:47 PM

Run Memtest.
Run a disk checker.

Those will rule out hard drive and ram problems.

9/27/2008 8:42:44 PM

i guess you weren't using a surge protector?

9/27/2008 9:03:36 PM

Boot a linux bootcd and see what happens.

9/27/2008 9:06:12 PM

^^I was using a surge protector

I'll try the stuff LimpyNuts is talking about

9/28/2008 11:08:44 PM