Totally dead RIO Car...

I just had my RIO installed into my car, and it worked fine for a while, but then started giving me the "No Hard Disks Found" error. I have already replaced the cable before, so I brought the RIO inside, checked the cables, and tried starting the RIO back up again. It won't power on at all. No hard drive spinning, no LED, nothing. I tried it in my car, as well as connected to an external power supply. Does anyone have any thoughts?

Does anyone have any thoughts?

Yes. Go through the entire list of possible reasons instead of focusing solely on the cable replacement you already did.

I have gone through that part of the FAQ, but my main concern is that the unit doesn't power up at all. There is no indication at all that it is powering up or anything. There is no fan sound, no whirring, not a peep. I don't mind troubleshooting the disk problems, it's this possible power issue that scares me.

There is no fan sound

Good thing, since it doesn't have a fan.

Since getting the error, have you opened it up again to look for anything obvious, like a loose IDE cable that's only part way connected? Or that the drive tray has come loose from its shock mounts?

I opened it up again, rechecked all the connections and still doesn't seem to have power going to it. I don't have a serial cable handy ( I was using the sled, which is now in the car!), so I can't look to see if it is even trying to boot up. I'll try to check it again in the morning though...

In reply to:

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Go through the entire list of possible reasons instead of focusing solely on the cable replacement

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Go through the entire list of possible reasons instead of focusing solely on the usual problems associated with problematic HDD access

Greetings!

Question - when you say "no LED", I assume you are referring to the standby LED. Do you see the unit even attempt to boot on the VFD, with the animation, etc? I just want to confirm that the unit is getting power at all, because the way the post is written, it may not be getting any.

Have you tried powering up the player with the drive disconnected (unplug the cable from the mainboard)? A faulty drive or cable can cause the player to fail to power up.

Also, does the red LED insidde the player on the right-hand side come on?

Looks similair to the problem I had before....
have a look:
http://empeg.comms.net/php/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=empeg_tech&Number=84246&Search=true&Forum=All_Forums&Words=crapaddict&Match=Username&Searchpage=0&Limit=25&Old=allposts&Main=84246

Maybe this will help ?
good luck