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Please help! Why is my computer dying?

maneesh

Junior Member
Hey Guys,

I have a computer I built myself and its been running for two years. Three weeks ago, on the day I had to leave for the holidays, my computer simply stopped turning on. I didn't know what was wrong, but I brought up some spare parts to try to repair it yesterday. I replaced the power supply, and it still wasn't working, and then I noticed something weird...whenever I pressed the on button, and then turned the power supply OFF (by hitting the switch button on the supply) and then hit the on button again, my computer would turn on for a fraction of a second (a fan would turn and then quickly turn off)

I attribute this to some kind of capacitor that stores energy or something, because nothing should happen with the supply is off. Anyway, I kept fiddling with it and eventually got the computer to work great for an hour, but now it is back to not turning on. I hooked up the computer to a switch and I know that it turns on for a fraction of a second every time i hit the power button, but it does not remain on.

Do you have any ideas on how to fix it?

Thanks,

-Maneesh
 
Try reseating the ram, that sometimes works for me. Also if it's really dusty, try getting a can of air and blowing the dust out of it, I've seen that work before haha. Basically check and make sure everything is getting good connection and there's no dust inbetween anything. If none of that works sounds like a faulty motherboard.
 
Yeah, i've definitely done the ram thing several times. Connections are fine for sure. Is it probably a faulty motherboard, no fixes then?
 
A few problems come to mind:

Motherboard could be fried, it's not able to route enough of a charge to your system when you try to power it up. Symptom of a short. Sometimes enough power will bypass the short to power it up though.

Bad memory is proven to not let your system boot up. Most motherboards will NOT allow the system to boot if you have no ram or bad ram.

Check the wires leading from the power button to your motherboard, could have come loose.



The thing is with a dead comp, if any of the parts shows signs of abnormal voltage the power supply will shut off, preventing damage to the system. It could be any of those parts in there causing this problem. You claim to have swapped out the power supply, I would really 90% suspect the motherboard...other 10% would be the memory.
 
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