I have an issue where a recently purchased Maxtor 160GB IDE hard drive is not allowing a specific PC to start. When the power wire is plugged into the Maxtor drive and the PC is started, the tower starts to power up for about 1 to 3 seconds, then the tower shuts down. The tower does not even get to load POST.

I initially thought it was the HD, but this issue is not happening on other PC's I've tried it on. Also, the drive passed a manufacturer hard drive test. When the PC does boot with the drive plugged in (which seems at random at this point, and rare), the drive functions fine. Also, other hard drives work in my PC without a problem. I've tried all 4 power wires plugged into the Maxtor drive with the same results. Having the IDE BUS wires plugged in or not has no efffect. The drive initially had no startup problems for the first 3 weeks after I've purchased it, then this started happening. I then thought maybe it was the power supply that's causing the problem but it's this specific drive that's only causing this problems, so I am not 100% sure.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

Dave

It could be the power supply not having enough power for that whole system. Thats what i would make out of it.

Thanks for the reply.

I thought that as well but I took out a few PCI cards, CD drive, DVD drive, and other hard drives and the issue is still happening. Also removed my video card to see if the computer would stay powered on, and it did. I am going to try another power supply, but I find it hard to believe that that is where the problem lies.

Note my computer is relatively newer, AMD Athlon 2200+, 512 MB RAM.

Dave