I was trying to fix my Dad’s PS3 (he recently passed away) nothing was working, so I connected the HDD from the PS3 into my PC. Upon plugging in the SATA cable, the entire PC shut off. I unplugged the HDD, but now when I power on the PC, the fans just run at max speed and nothing else happens. I don’t know how to troubleshoot this problem.
For you and all those suggesting this should not happen. Our motherboards and devices come in antistatic bags FOR A REASON!
Of course its a bad idea to plug any cables into a motherboard while it is running. You should always tun off the power, unplug the power cable and ideally hole the power button for a bit.
Reason being that the board runs on 3-12 volts with very little amps which can be easily fried by static electricity, let alone random plugged in cables that possibly arent correctly grounded yet.
Try (as suggested by others) to unplug the hdd you connected, run it again. If that doesnt help, unplug power cord, hold power button for 10 secs, plug back in, start back up. If that doesnt do it, unplug, unload and start pulling off all devices (take photos if before if you need it for remembering config) and try a minimal start.
If minimal doesnt work, try a different power supply, hoping you only broke that. If that doesnt work either you are the proud owner of a broken motherboard (or ram, or cpu).
In any case, please never put your hands on electrical devices while they are running. It is not safe or smart.
SATA was explicitly designed to do exactly this. The long pins are for ground.
Mistakes can still occur. Just because it is designed to be resilient does not mean that it’s infallible.