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I have a faulty Pentium 4 workstation with data that I would like to retrieve.

Here are the symptoms & what I've done so far:

  1. Machine is totally dead. Motherboard LED is lit but that is the only sign of life.
  2. I have replaced the power supply and bypassed the on/off switch.
  3. Tried a PC Analyzer motherboard tester but didn't have any power to the card.
  4. Unpluggged the P4 cable from the motherboard, hit the on/off switch, the power supply fan comes on and I get codes from the analyzer but nothing that seems to be of any value.
  5. Machine does not boot. Will not shut down by hitting the switch. Bad motherboard or could it be a bad CPU cooling fan?
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    If all you care is the data (and not getting the PC back up), you might just plug the HDD into other PC (if any). Or get USB -> IDE/SATA connector (depends on your HDD connector) and hopefully the HDD will still spin and shows the content.
    – Darius
    Oct 21, 2013 at 13:53
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    Since your problem is about data access, why not transplant the hard drive to your current computer? Oct 21, 2013 at 13:53
  • Yes I agree. Just Take out and the harddrive and connect to as an External USB on other computer.Or buy a hardrive enclosure.
    – S Nash
    Oct 21, 2013 at 14:06
  • Presumably because data recovery is a secondary concern and they would like to salvage the whole system, not only recover their data. (And maybe also to avoid it’s dead Jim; buy a new system responses.)
    – Synetech
    Oct 21, 2013 at 15:58

1 Answer 1

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Have a Pentium 4 machine

Many OEM motherboards from this era were notorious for bad capacitors. If you have any bulging or leaking capacitors on your board, that could be the cause.

Have replaced the power supply

You might experience this if you've used the wrong type of power supply. If it's an OEM board it may be proprietary and you cannot just swap in a standard power supply.

Unpluggged the P4 cable from the motherboard, hit the on/off switch, the power supply fan comes on and I get codes from the analyzer but nothing that seems to be of any value.

If the board has a P4 power socket, it needs it connected. So this is very strange.

Will not shut down by hitting the switch. Bad motherboard or could it be a bad CPU cooling fan?

Is the CPU cooling fan spinning? Then it's not bad.

If the board could not detect it is running, it would likely power on for a moment then immediately power off.

This could be a BIOS failure or CPU failure. Try swapping CPUs if you have a spare, otherwise replace the board. You would likely get a continuous beep or some type of beep from the board if RAM was bad but that may be worth switching as well.

If all you want is the data, I'd put it in a USB enclosure as suggested by others in the comments and retrieve the data that way.

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