Dead power supply?

[Scottee]

Yesterday, my brother said that the computer just shut off by itself while he was using it. The green lcd on the case just stood there blinking. The computer will no longer turn on. There is an lcd light on the motherboard itself that still lights up when I turn the power supply on, which to me seems to mean that at least some power is still getting to the motherboard. But when I do try to turn on the computer by pushing the regular power button, it seems that a faint wisp sound comes from the power supply. Is it my power supply that's dead? All the other connections seem to be fine.

 

[hjo3]

Unplug the ATX connector from the motherboard (and the rest of the PSU plugs from HDs, fans, etc.) and, using a wire with two bare leads, connect Pin 14 (green) to any of the black wires. If the PSU starts up properly (e.g. fan's spinning) then it's probably not dead. If this is the case, you might want to start testing that mobo...

 

[Scottee]

Thanks for the tip hjo3. I tried what you said and the fan still doesn't start up on the power supply. I get the same wisp sound. It sounds like a motor that's trying to start up but is stuck. So that means dead, right?

 

[hjo3]

Ah, then yes. It's definitely dead.

 

[Scottee]

Thanks, I got a new power supply and everything's running fine.

Question. Last week I was having a problem with getting some bad clusters on the hard drive. Had to go through all the scandisk junk. Could that corruption have been caused by the dying power supply?

 

[FracturedSoul]

That is very possible, try scandisk now and see if those clusters are still bad.

 

[hjo3]

EDIT: nm. Though I doubt bad clusters will magically repair themselves with the installation of a new PSU...

 

[kursplat]

run the drive manufacturers utility on it. it may be able to repair things chk dsk can't.
good luck