Re: PC won't start


"Jill" <f@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Xns974DA4AAF4BA1fchancecom@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> likely because it's a Dell, but I thought I would ask for help anyway.
>
> So, here's the deal. Things been a POS from the get go, and spent the
> last year sitting on a desk bearly used (maybe once a month). A couple
> of months ago my system went down and the Dell became the new home office
> computer. Since, it's been running 24hrs a day, as I never turn my
> desktop off (for a number of reasons).
>
> Last night I moved it from one room to another and set it back up and
> when I pressed the power button, nothing happened. I held it down fir a
> minute to try and reset it and turned the power bar off (which caused the
> lights on the front of the case to light up breifly <maybe as a means of
> flushing any risidual power out?>) and then turned the power back on
> again. After pressing the power button a couple of more times in
> frustration, IT STARTS!
>
> Since its now in my bedroom, I turned it off when I was done and it
> hasn't been willing to turn on again since. I spent some time screwing
> with the button, but no go.
>
> So, I figure its the power supply. Swapped it out for the one from the
> broken system (since it was the mobo that went on that one) and I ended
> up with a very strange result. The new PS is a Super Flower 350W/370W (?
> if that makes sense) and has three fan settings. Each of these settings
> has its own colour light (blue, green and red) to make it easy to see
> what speed you have it on. Now, with this new PS in, when turn the PS
> on, I get a flash of lights on the front of the case, the fan spins for a
> second and then the fan light goes very dim. Its still on, but very
> faint. When I press the power button on the front of the case, still
> nothing happens. When I turn the PS off, I get the same thing; fan light
> gets bright, fan spins for a sec, lights on front of case, then the power
> goes off.
>
> unplugged everything, but 1 stick of RAM, 1 HD, and that's about it.
>
> Thoughts, ideas, suggestions? Any help would be much appreciated.
>
> A
>

You don't say how old it is, but some years ago (around the PII era IIRC)
Dell were much criticised for switching the pinouts around on their power
supplies and motherboards, so you had to buy their exact replacements.
Fitting a standard ATX power supply was seemingly straightforward as there
was no obvious clue they were different, but as soon as it wss powered on,
there was catastrophic failure of the motherboard and/or the power supply,
or if one was lucky the power supply would just shut down before any damage
was done. I'd check the Dell power supply is indeed a standard type, which
it will be if it's fairly recent.

Dave


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