Lighting, Light Fixtures, Ceiling and Exhaust Fans - Replacing Ceiling Fan with Light

I am replacing two ceiling fan/light combos with just lights. The fans are powered by separate light switches.

I have already replaced one fan with no problems. The associated ceiling box had two house cables coming in (i.e. 2 black, 2 white, and 2 ground wires). I spliced the white house wires together. I spliced the fixture's white wire with one of the house black wires and the fixture's black wire with the other house black wire. I spliced all the ground wires together. Everything worked fine.

The second fixture is a different story, though. There are 4 house cables coming in (i.e. 4 black, 4 white, and 4 ground wires). I don't know how the fan was wired, but only 1 black wire is hot (with the light switch in either position). The other 3 black wires remain dead regardless of switch position. Additionally, as soon as I disconnected the ceiling fan, the first light stopped working, regardless of its associated switch position. Any recommendations??

The correct solution for both lights is to know what the original wiring was BEFORE you changed anything. It sounds like it it too late for that.

I do not think you wired the first fan properly. It sounds like you are switching the neutral wire, which would be very wrong and dangerous. This needs to be addressed.

As for the second light, same solution. Tell us ALL the wiring at the light and the switch and we can probably sort it out.

Your first solution violates code. Although it works, it may or may not be safe. You may have wired it with reverse polarity, and you certainly violated the code's requirements for color coding of the wires.

Let's not forget this problem. Before we're done here, we need to come back and fix this. But let's fix your other problem first.

You said, "I don't know how the fan was wired." That's quite unfortunate because it makes this job at least ten times harder than it had to be.

The first step in solving this problem is determining which one of the black/white pairs goes to the switch. This can be done a variety of ways. If you have an ohmmeter (a common setting on any multimeter), you can see which pair has zero or infinite ohms depending on switch position. It is essential that you do this test with the circuit breaker off.

So, do you own a multimeter with an ohmmeter?

Thanks for the advice. I used an ohmmeter and figured out which pair of wires in the second ceiling box are controlled by the switch (they still don't receive any power, though). That leaves me with 1 hot black wire, a white/black pair controlled by the switch, and 2 black/3 white wires that are dead and aren't controlled by any switch. The first ceiling box still does not have power. So how should I wire the second light and re-wire the first light? If it helps at all, I verified that each switch is powered by its own black/white wires.

The switches are wired as switch loops.

If you do not know what a switch loop is then you should not be doing this work until you do. There are numerous books that discuss home wiring. You should OWN at least one of them.

To correct the mistake you made at the first light:
Connect the power black wire to the switch white wire. Connect the power white wire to the light white wire. Connect the switch black wire to the light black wire. Connect all ground wires together.

At the non-working light:
Connect the power Black wire to the switch white wire and to the other two black wires. Connect the switch black wire to the light black wire. Connect the remaining white wires together, including the white wire for the light. Connect all ground wires together.

Thanks for the help. I took some time to understand how everything was wired--everything you said made perfect sense and the lights work perfectly now. Thanks again.