[davephil]

I'm working on a 10-yr old HP pavillion pc. The pc would not turn on at all, monitor displays 'no signal'. the pc lights flicker. I had an older atx power supply and tried that- it worked. so I know that the old power supply was bad. the case was VERY dirty. almost all the vent holes were clogged. even after I tried my 'new' power supply, the cpu fan does not come on and I still get 'no signal' on monitor (the hard drive/cdrom drive DO come on). I'm thinking the power supply blew, taking the mobo with it. I don't want to spend alot of time on this, but can anyone offer any thoughts on this? thanks.

[norton850]

A 10 year old system that you don't want to spend a lot of time on. What can I say?

[davephil]

well, I'm sure not going to go out and buy another mobo for this beast. I guess I'd like to know whether my idea as to a toasted mobo makes sense. Or is there a way to rule it out? The only thing keeping from trashing it right now, is my sister didn't do alot of backing up and we'd loose alot of data.

[lemondrop]

You seem to be comfortable taking apart a computer, so why don't you just take the hard drive out and put it in a working computer and copy the files you need? Sure would save the headache of troubleshooting a 10 year old HP. That's assuming the hard drive isn't dead.

As for your theory, sure it makes sense. Just a few weeks ago I had a customer who had a faulty PS take out his mobo, RAM, and PCI cards. It even went so far as to fry the two hard drives. If there is a path for electricity to take it will find it.