Brand-new PC power problem
polycounter lvl 8
Hey guys,
My wife's new computer arrived yesterday, and after the initial installation, everything seemed fine. It's running Windows XP Pro, on a Foxconn G31MV motherboard. This rig was built recently, bought on eBay and seems to be pretty much brand new.
However, after shutting it down last night, we can't get it to power up this morning. I've opened up the casing, and there doesn't seem to be any loose connectors, but the machine is totally unresponsive. I switched out the power cable and tried using a different power outlet, still nothing. And yeah, the rear power switch is set to 'on'.
Any ideas why such a new machine that was working perfectly well less than twelve hours ago would suddenly stop functioning? My first thought was that it is a faulty PSU, but surely it'd take a little longer before showing signs of problems?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
My wife's new computer arrived yesterday, and after the initial installation, everything seemed fine. It's running Windows XP Pro, on a Foxconn G31MV motherboard. This rig was built recently, bought on eBay and seems to be pretty much brand new.
However, after shutting it down last night, we can't get it to power up this morning. I've opened up the casing, and there doesn't seem to be any loose connectors, but the machine is totally unresponsive. I switched out the power cable and tried using a different power outlet, still nothing. And yeah, the rear power switch is set to 'on'.
Any ideas why such a new machine that was working perfectly well less than twelve hours ago would suddenly stop functioning? My first thought was that it is a faulty PSU, but surely it'd take a little longer before showing signs of problems?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Replies
PSU: As you said a psu don't die in a night, usually shows failure signs, mainly because a capacitor is going to commit suicide. Because of bad design in relation to heat dissipation, a stupid 30 cents capacitor can put out of order even a pricey psu. If a working psu stops suddenly to do its job it could be because of a protection fuse broken, maybe because tension jumps in power grid (forgive my misuse of terms). Changing a fuse is inexpensive, but you need to open the psu. Test: try the psu on another mainboard if possible. If it works, it's a motherboard or power switch issue. If it does not it could be the protection fuse.
Motherboard: it gives the psu the starting signal when a short circuit is closed by the case power switch. If the switch works, the motherboard could fail in giving the startup signal. Test: try the mainboard with another psu in the same case if possible. If it works it is a psu or power switch issue.
Case power switch: it could fail and not close the short circuit on the mainboard. Test: you can do the short circuit with a simple screwdriver between power switch pins of motherboard connector, or temporarily attach the reset switch on power pins and test it. If it works it's a power switch failure, if it doesn't, see above.
I hope this helps, and forgive my not so good English
I haven't replaced a PSU before, so I'm wary of trying for fear of making the situation worse. However, of your three suggestions SyncViewS, I think that the most likely culprit is the power switch itself. Since testing it doesn't seem to be as difficult, I'll try that first and report back on my progress.
Thanks again.
Is there a way, other than switching the drive into my machine and deleting the sensitive information, to restore the drive to a factory state without being able to boot it up? As you can probably guess, I've not switched out a hard drive before and wanted to check my options before performing surgery on the innards.
Thanks for any help or suggestions.
The "surgery" is quite straightforward, as I'm sure it is a Serial ATA HDD, with two connectors, the bigger for power and smaller (usually with a red cable) for data, easy to plug and unplug, without any jumper or setting to mess up with. Anyway I understand your reluctance in doing such work if it's the first time.
The only idea that comes to mind is to make the guy come to your place and give a look at the PC, that could be diagnosed and repaired quite easily if is a psu failure (which is likely). If it's something worse, like MB or power switch (case), and the whole PC has to be taken apart and rebuilt, you can ask to keep the HDD and mount it back in the new unit once he comes for delivery at your home.
Oh, and the guy lives about two hundred miles away, so I'm just going to send it back to him and look for another unit elsewhere.
Thanks so much for all your input, though - my wife and I really appreciate it.