Computer Hardware help!!?

Question

Hi,
I had a computer desktop which ran great for years. Anyway I put the wrong rated fuse in the plug, the insides were also heavily covered with dust. I plugged it in and turned it on. It then made a strange whirring noise and smoke started coming out of the casing!!!! I ripped out the power cable from the back straight away
I'm guessing the power supply is shot. I'm thinking maybe the motherboard is too?
I would really like to get the computer up and running again-It had an old 1.8GHZ Intel Pentium 4 chip in, as I remember 1GB (1000Mb) Ram with a standard sound and graphics card.
Which items could be shot? Is there a method of testing them without owning a voltmeter?
How much would to cost to repair, of a rough guide anyway.?
Is it possible to save the information that was on the hard drive - It had a lot of college work which would be handy to keep hold of

I also live in the UK so only English prices would be helpful, not dollars

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Chances are you fried one or more of your fans, which got dusty and shorted. Replace them.
Clean (vacuum) all the dust out and then try it again. If you blew the motherboard, you can't do any worse. Also, do that while the case is open to see where the smoke comes from IF it does that again.
I had one tower fried by lightning some years back. It frizzled the speaker wires, and blew one plug in card, everything else still worked fine for years after that.

Answer 2

You replaced the fuse, so I assume that the original one blew... Replacing it with a higher value will allow more current to pass to the computer. The most likely cause is a bad power supply and /or a bad fan bearing.

Remove the power supply from the computer and try powering it up on it's own. If you get a repeat performance, the rest of the computer is probably OK and you need to replace the power supply. The fan bearings go bad when they accumulate dust. The fan becomes unbalanced and prematurely burns out the bearings, That will also cause the whirring noise.

Replacing the power supply is a relatively simple task and shouldn't cost more than $20 - $30.

Answer 3

you put the wrong rated fuse in the computer? If you did that you should prolly just bring all your electronics back to the store and tell them your not smart enough to own a computer. If you did this then you def mess it up, and blown some component inside, depending on the smoke, it could of been a capacitor or a transistor or something worse. If its bad it could be very expensive to repair. From the info you gave, id say your hard drive is prolly ok and that you damaged either the mother board or the power supply, most likely the mother board. But without seeing, testing it there's no way of being sure. Take it to a repair shop or call the manufacture.

Answer 4

first try using a lead that u know works if when press ur button u hear no sound of fans and see no lights and u cant open the cd drive then its almost definately the psu (power supply unit) using the wrong rating of fuse will not automatically damage ur comp in any way it just means if there is an irregularity in the power flow then the fuse will not protect as it should . and even then its the psu that will most likely sustain the damage.as it has an internal secondry fuse. a new psu is relatively cheap. (15 pounds up) as u have a P-4 cpu an atx type power supply is needed .

Answer 5

before everything you would be able to desire to comprehend what's A Hardware !! Answering to this question is particularly basic That Hardware Are The issues That Exist bodily Exists. which potential we are able to See,touch and sense Their existence... Now Coming to the computing gadget Hardware that are no longer something yet electric instruments that have A Relation With computers. alongside with I/O instruments Like Keyboard,Mouse,computer screen CPU ++. Such electric instruments Are Collections of digital Circuits, Mechanical instruments and protective situations... those instruments purely is familiar with Hardware Language Or gadget Language(0,a million) and right here The Binary quantity device happens... that's yet another element... wish It facilitates... thank you for analyzing until ultimately end... :) (y)

Answer 6

I work on a bunch of these old PCs and chances are it is just the power supply. when you turn the PC on if the fan on the power doesn't start turning there are no other test you can perform until it is replaced. and as far as your hard drive goes you can use it as a slave in another PC and access everything you have on it.
If you do a little shopping the power supply is pretty cheap.

Answer 7

Hi I cant help you with the fried insides but your hard drive should be ok if you know any computer nerds capable of transplanting the drive into another machine they can back up your old files to disk for you

hope this helps a bit

Answer 8

Putting a fuse in the plug Will not change anything,probably the whole computer has given up.

Answer 9

easiest/cheapest thing would be to buy another old PC - you can pick one up SO cheap on eBay etc and then swap your old harddisk into the 'new' pc. Shouldn't cost more than £100 (and you'll probably get a faster PC) - you could easily spend days and much more agro with the old cooked box and still have more problems popping up as more toasted components give up the ghost.

Answer 10

Its fried man, your better off buying a new computer...