Is my computer fried (or what's the problem)?

Factual Questions
1

I don’t have all the specs or anything, but given the severity of the problem, I don’t think y’all will need it. If you do, I’ll try to provide.

When I arrived home last night, I heard the sound of my computer’s fan running. This was odd because I knew I turned it off when I left the house in the morning. I investigated, and sure enough, the fan was going full force, but the computer wasn’t on. So I tried to turn in on, and no go. So I cut the power to it which turned off the fan finally. Turned the power back on to the machine, the fan stays off but the machine won’t start. The cable modem light was just sitting there blinking in problem mode and my cable’s been out since last night too (not an outage, apparently just my house). I have no idea if the problem might be related.

There was a pretty good electrical storm that blew through here last night, so I’m guessing that’s the problem, but I’m interested to hear what you guys think. Is it possible the power supply got damaged or is it undoubtedly worse?

Thanks in advance.

2

Yes the PS is more than likely fried, along with other components with out a doubt.

PS’s are fairly inexpensive.

Here’s one for $31

3

I’m betting its the motherboard, although the power supply may be shot too. The motherboard sends a signal to the power supply to tell it to turn on. What I think happened is your motherboard is toast, and the signal to turn on the power supply happened to be shorted to the “on” position when it went, so your motherboard is constantly telling the power supply to be on even though the motherboard isn’t working and you never pressed the power switch.

I can’t rule out a power supply problem based on the symptoms though.

4

Unless you have a pre-built computer that uses a proprietary or non-standard power source. I think Dells fall into this category.

5

Well. can you give more details? What kind of system? Any lights (besides the modem) that are on or a different color? Sounds toasted to me, but lots of later type systems have diagnostic lights to give you some idea where to start looking.

I just replaced this lady’s PS after a freak lightning storm last week and it was a no go, Dell tells me it’s the MB, I chimed-in that the processor couldn’t be ruled out either so that are sending this as well. I’ll let you know what happens, but from the intial conclusion I’d have to say MB as well- but hey try a PS… if you up to saving your system, you might get lucky.

6

It’s an older Dell (4 or 5 years) and I can’t remember the exact model (I’m at work), but I’m pretty convinced it’s done for. No lights at all.

So I think it’s probably time to go shopping. I think I’ll probably just try to harvest the old hard drive. Thanks for the advice all.