• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

Super Quick Fix

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

turd

Member
Joined
Sep 16, 2001
OK another post about a someones computer.

A good friend has been bugging me for about a week to look at her sisters computer so I tell have your sister bring it over your house and I will pick it up about 3:30 this Friday. I get to her house and first we shoo some horses out of the yard and then she goes in and gets the computer. I ask her what is wrong and she tells me "it wont start and she thinks its that thing on the back." I say "What thing?" She tips it up and points to the PSU fan grill, so in the instance I look I just notice the voltage dip selector is set to 230. I then say thats it it wont turn on? Nothing else? She says yea, so I flick it over to 115 and say try it now and she goes in and comes out and says it works now. We kinda laugh and I ask her if she has any superglue and she gets some and I glue it into the 115 position and we have a beer on the porch and then I head across the way.

Felt pretty good.
 
Good that you checked there first. Probably would not have been happy if you took the system home, ripped it apart, and after troubleshooting for hours then discovered it.

Good job. go have another :beer:
 
Well I think if it was set at 115 and the power came from a 230 outlet that the PSU or source circuit would have a fuse blown or perhaps some PSU's have internal regulation that would catch it. You would think the burn up potential is too high to not have fusing. I guess it would depend on the PSU.

This is the second time I have seen the dip selector set wrong from 115 to 230 and in the previous case the computer just would cycle restarts. That was on an Antec so I guess the behavior depends on the PSU.

In the case above and the one before I attribute the change to the fact that both persons have a few children in the 3-7 year old range. Those switches don't just reposition themselves!

It's not something I check for, but in both cases my eye just caught it when looking in that area, so I would guess it's pretty noticeable.
 
I've never seen one blow from having it set to 230V here in north america. I'm not sure what happens when you go to somplace they have 230V, and the PSU is set to 115V. The quick easy fixes where everyone is happy are the best. I once had a client drive for 45 mins to the shop I work at because she tried powering on her system and it was giving her the old NTLDR missing. I asked her on the phone to check and see if there was a floppy in the drive, and she said that she was sure there wasn't. 45 mins later she arrives at the shop, I power on the system and hear the click of the floppy then get the NTLDR missing error. Sure enough there was a floppy in the drive. I pop it out, reboot, and lo and behold! Windows loading screen. We both got a good chuckle out of it after I reassured here that she wasn't the first one to make that mistake.
 
AFAIK the power supply doubles 115v to 230v if the switch is set to 115v. When the switch is set to 230v, no doubling is done as the PSU takes 230v straight in.

If you have it set to 230v and plugged into 115v socket, the psu gets half of the required voltage and won't run. If you set it to 115v and plug in 230v, psu gets 460v total running through the psu and lots of magic smokes would be let out.

Why they still have externally accessed switch is beyond me. They could have set it inside the psu and be harder to reach and flip by accident. Very few people take their computer across 115v/230v boundary anyway.
 
Back