Spark Causes System Shutdown

[Nix]

My brother rang me and told me that he was trying to plug his camera in to the back of his PC and realised he was pushing the wrong end of the usb cable into the slot.

He saw a spark and then his system shut down.

He was then unable to boot it.

He told me that there must be power as the CD player can be used to play a CD and listen to it via the headphone jack but other than that nothing else.

He is going to frop it off to me for investigation.

In the meanwhile any ideas on where the problem could lie ?

I'm guessing he's shorted the USB port which has then caused other problems.

[Calpitor]

What I would first look for would be possible scorch marks or discolouration on the board itself another thought would be to look for other physcial damage like crack or fractures near the USB connection.

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[SuperSparks]

Fried mobo, would be my guess. I've heard that shorting the USB power lines together will do that (never actually tried it myself ). Try clearing the CMOS anyway, if your brother got lucky maybe the short just corrupted that.

[rbc1100]

Fried mobo

I hate to agree, but I must ,as I have seen it happen before.

[OilPatch197]

YOU WOULD THINK WHENEVER THEY WERE DESIGNING THE PLUG THEY WOULD HAVE MADE IT SUCH A WAY THAT IF YA TRIED TO PUT IT IN BACKWARD, IT WON'T GO.

Kinda like a Printer port, you can't get those backards!

[104456]

My monies on the motherboard too,perhaps when he pays out for a new one he should get a powered USB hub too

[Nix]

Hmmm thanks all for the replies.

He's supposed to be dropping it off today so I'll have a look at it tonight after my 2 boys are in bed.

[OilPatch197]

IF he had a PCI USB card would he have more likely to kill the Card or would he still destroy the mobo, how is Onboard USB different from PCI USB interface?

[BubbahGee]

I would be thinking the difference might be that a card could easily be removed and Onboard USB is part of the motherboard or is that systemboard I don't really know the difference between mother\system~board

[user595212]

Here's another possible thing to try:

Ground yourself on the case, push and hold the power button in, shut the power off in the back. Leave it like overnight or something. Turn the power back on in the back, hold the power button in and see if it'll boot.

This happened to me a couple of times due to static electricity in the winter. Each time I was able to restore things.

This is all, of course, assuming the USB port, or something else, doesn't have scorch marks!!

Cheers
Wendy

[Nix]

Don't know.

He didn't drop it off today, so need to wait until he does.

[thelordglen]

Is this an on board or a external port like are these plugs joined to the motherboard with cables? We had a situation at work were one was plugged around the wrong way and it blew up a camera belive it or not really weird

[Nix]

Ok opened case and powered on to see what happens, PSU fan running, CPU fan running, HD spins up but nothing more.

No beeps, nothing.

Tried a boot floppy and a bootable CD, nothing.

No signal to monitor.

No getting into BIOS \ CMOS.

Replaced CMOS battery just in case - nothing.

I hooked the HD up in my machine as a slave and was able to read it ok so the HD is fine.

The CDRW also powers up and can play a CD with sound being heard through the headphone jack.

Specs are:

P4 Titan Motherboard GA-8SIMLP
SIS 650GX Host/Memory controller
SIS 961B MuTIOL Media I/O
SIS 650GX onboard VGA
SIS 7012 onboard audio
RTL8100BL onboard Lan
256Mb DDR266 RAM
40 GB Seagate HD

I totally dismantlled the machine and inspected everything for scorch marks - nothing.

There is a little plastic cage that holds the heatsink and fan in place over the CPU but undoing the two levers I can't work out how to then remove the cage / fan / heatsink to inspect the CPU for damage.

Any further ideas.

I've already told him that he probably needs to replace the Mobo and CPU.

[104456]

Hi Nix
A few pics here which may help on removal.
As to whats broke Id say minimum motherboard and maybe/maybe not processor,its a pity you've not got another board to test it in.

[Nix]

Thanx that looks like it exactly - now to reverse the process to remove the HS and fan so as to inspect the CPU.