Apparently USB harddrives can kill :S

[arthurleung]

I just decided to clean up my room a bit and move all my external harddrives to the same computer.

After I hook up 3 Seagate FreeAgent disks, and my desktop does not power on :S
Nothing was spinning / working when I use any of the 4 power/ reset button on my chassis / board. Neither do my PSU fan start spinning

Pulled the HDDs off the USB ports and it still doesn't boot up

There goes my DFI NF4 SLI-DR

How the heck did this happen when the same machine worked a couple of hours ago...

Tried Clear CMOS which probably wouldn't have helped anyway if its a hardware fault, not sure how can I try the PSU though :S

[peterb]

It is unlikely (but still possible!) that plugging a USB device into the USB port would bork the nobo - even if the power connectors were short circuited. More likely that something has got dislodged while you were moving stuff around.

Check you haven't dislodged the psu power input plug or knocked any external switch off - ditto the wall plug.

Then check any fuses to ensure that power is getting to the psu. You could try disconnecting everything from the psu apart from the fans (to give it some load) and see if it starts up - and some mobo have an LED on them that lights whenever the psu is live (even if the machine is shut down - comes from the standby supply on the psu)

Do the external HDs still work in another machine?

[SiM]

This happened to me once. A friend decided to plug in a usb hard drive & use my computer when I weren't there. I had to buy a new motherboard

Sorry I can't help solve your problem, just thought I would let you know that it happens ...

[arthurleung]

It is unlikely (but still possible!) that plugging a USB device into the USB port would bork the nobo - even if the power connectors were short circuited. More likely that something has got dislodged while you were moving stuff around.

Check you haven't dislodged the psu power input plug or knocked any external switch off - ditto the wall plug.

Then check any fuses to ensure that power is getting to the psu. You could try disconnecting everything from the psu apart from the fans (to give it some load) and see if it starts up - and some mobo have an LED on them that lights whenever the psu is live (even if the machine is shut down - comes from the standby supply on the psu)

Do the external HDs still work in another machine?

I force powered on the PSU and it worked fine, there is power supply to the board (onboard LED is on) and when the PSU is connected the power LED stays on (whick pretty much suggest it is f***ed)

All the HDDs worked fine too. Anyway, there goes my nice ultra-low power Athlon 64 machine :S

[peterb]

It does look like that, although the LED will remain on when the PSU is connected to a mains supply (even though the PSU is powered down as it comes from the standby psu that powers the soft start, wake on lan etc)

Don't know if you can RMA it - plugging in working USB devices should not kill the board.

[Fabula]

Turn off the PSU and disconnect from mains. Wait a few minutes and reconnect. It has worked a few times in the past for me, though I don't know why.

[Workaholic]

It is unlikely (but still possible!) that plugging a USB device into the USB port would bork the nobo - even if the power connectors were short circuited. More likely that something has got dislodged while you were moving stuff around.

Check you haven't dislodged the psu power input plug or knocked any external switch off - ditto the wall plug.

Then check any fuses to ensure that power is getting to the psu. You could try disconnecting everything from the psu apart from the fans (to give it some load) and see if it starts up - and some mobo have an LED on them that lights whenever the psu is live (even if the machine is shut down - comes from the standby supply on the psu)

Do the external HDs still work in another machine?

I killed a motherboard in the past by stepping on a USB cable at the front of the tower (whoops) and it came out of the socket and shortcuited the computer...
Try unplugging the USB connectors on the motherboard (if that's your problem.)