Sudden Failure while performing repair work.

[Zodiark1593]

A friend of my Dad's brought in an old XPC Shuttle he plays old games on (not even connected to the internet.) He needed a new dvd drive to replaced the unit that is stuck in addition to making sure his games are patched and running. Got that done, put the front panel back together, doing some last minute things with the fit of the drive. Tested the drive. Then suddenly, PC won't so much as even turn on (the green LED inside is off).

 

Following troubleshooting steps, I can only conclude either the psu or the mobo had decided to commit seppuku, which is not good as I earlier told the guy (before said failure) the PC would be ready by morning. 

 

A) what do I tell the guy? Not looking forward to telling him his pc died at my hands.

B) Should I replace the part at my expense (keeping in mind this isn't a business, I'd lose money by doing so)?

 

Given the age of the machine and the proprietary nature of the board, a dead board is probably RIP for this thing unless I can somehow get an itx board with additional case fan in there. Unless I rip out the PSU from my system for a bit (won't fit but doesn't matter for testing), I have no way to confirm if the Shuttle PSU is dead though.

[alexhelvetica]

Tell him that something happened so the computer is not going to be ready by tomorrow. Test the PSU and motherboard, then explain what happened. Things can happen, hopefully he will understand. 

[Zodiark1593]

1 minute ago, Comic_Sans_MS said:

Tell him that something happened so the computer is not going to be ready by tomorrow. Test the PSU and motherboard, then explain what happened. Things can happen, hopefully he will understand. 

He is certainly the understanding type. I absolutely loathe bringing such news though.

[alexhelvetica]

2 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

He is certainly the understanding type. I absolutely loathe bringing such news though.

Test the motherboard and power supply 1st and find out the problem. Then work out what you are going to do. It could be something as stupid as you have overloaded the PSU so it has turned off to protect itself. 

[Zodiark1593]

21 minutes ago, Comic_Sans_MS said:

Test the motherboard and power supply 1st and find out the problem. Then work out what you are going to do. It could be something as stupid as you have overloaded the PSU so it has turned off to protect itself. 

Tested the psu, both the board and psu whirred to life. Plugged the 24 pin back, nothing. 

 

Eventually, I looked to the board that has the power and reset buttons. In the pc there are two headers where it connects and works (at least formerly). Originally, it was connected to the front usb daughterboard which has a header on it for the power(which in turn connects to the mobo), but that seems to be where the trouble is. Plugging it into the header on the board itself gives life. 

 

Very odd problem and an odd time for it to happen. Even weirder is it(the header on the usb daughterboard) was working perfectly then suddenly decided not to. I'm curious now if that usb daughterboard had failed. At any rate, this thing is going back together, one more boot, and then bed.

 

As Linus says, always call/post for tech support, because you find out what the problem is 10 minutes later.