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Question from Oliver: I bought a new graphics card and the guy at Best Buy told me I’d need to replace the power supply in my computer before I install it.
The power supply that was in there was 350 watts and the one I replaced it with is 750 watts.
Everything seems to be powering up correctly but now I’m getting a “Disk Boot Failure” message.
How can I fix this? Do I need to change a BIOS setting or maybe move a jumper somewhere to get the hard drive to work with the new power supply?
Rick’s answer: You shouldn’t have to change any settings or make any other changes to your system, Oliver.
If the machine was booting into Windows from the hard drive before you swapped out the power supplies, it should still boot up now without having to change any settings of any kind.
My guess is you either disconnected a cable to the hard drive and forgot to reconnect it or you accidentally tugged it loose while working around inside the computer. It’s also possible that you simply forgot to connect the hard drive to the new power supply after you finished installing it.
I recommend that you double-check the connections at both ends of the two cables that plug in to the hard drive. I have a feeling you’ll find a loose (or possibly disconnected) connector somewhere.
If that fails to fix the problem, let me know and I’ll tell you what to try next. Good luck!
Update from Oliver: Thanks for your help, Rick. You were right on the money.
I checked the cables and sure enough the big cable had pulled loose from the motherboard. I plugged it back in and now the computer boots up just fine.
Bonus tip: This post discusses another upgrade you can make that should speed up your computer (a lot), and it’ll probably cost a lot less than what you paid to upgrade the graphics card!
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