My daughter wanted some pictures off an old Western Digital WD Caviar 10 GB HDD that was still hooked up to the old defunct 486 machine. The machine was NOT powered and had no externals eg: mouse, key board. IT! Was a DEAD Parrot! So she let her idiot boy friend try to recover the data. Here's what he did.
He left the ribbon cable connected to the old WD 10 GB HDD connected to the old 486 mother board and connected a power supply connector from the newer Intel Pentium 2 Compaq Presario 6000 to the old hard drive. They turned on the Presario and it started with nothing on the screen and then shut down for one second and then started back up, again with no Icons on the screen but it stayed running. After their initial attempt at start up they came and got me. After resisting the urge to beat the boyfriend with the old HDD I disconnected it from the new machine and made sure everything was as it should be but I got the same start up results on several attempts. No F8 and no F12 pleasure as there is no start screen to see. Just a nice bright screen as it normally looks only no Icons, task bar, etc. I should note that the Presario's power switch is suddenly useless. I must unplug the power cord to turn it on and off. Is all lost? Move this post if I'm in the wrong section, but I didn't see an Idiot Kids forum in the index.

Thanks.
Greg.

Sounds like it semi fried the power supply

Everything else should be OK

Many old drives lock up from not being used, it's safer just to throw them away

I'll try that tomorrow DaChew. I just happen to have one that should work. It's out of an IBM PC 300GL. As a side note, years ago I had a drive lock up, so I freezie bagged it and left it in the deep freeze for two days. I set up a table beside the freezer and got the rest of a system set up on it and hooked up the drive with the longest end of the cable with the drive left in the freezer. Mind you it was only a 5 GB but I got what I wanted off of it on to the new drive. I don't know if I could do that now. There's been a lot of beer since then. I should have taken notes and pictures. By the way. The old drive's jumpers are factory set to J8 Jumper settings. They should be set to slave, no?

Thanks.
Greg