Intel Pentium 4, CPU 2.40GHz
O/S Windows 98
Left the house yesterday for a few hours and left the computer on. Came back to find that the power had been out for some time (blackout) and now the computer won’t turn on. It’s plugged into a power bar and everything else including the monitor that is plugged into the power bar is working ok. I’m guessing there was a power surge and now something is fried.
I’ve tried unplugging and plugging in the computer both at the power socket and the cord at the back of the computer. I tried the little 0/1 switch at the back of the PC but no luck.
If it’s the power supply, is this something that could easily be replaced? I’m in the market for a new PC but I’d need into this one long enought to recover some data that I never backed up. I know, I know :smack:
Power supplies are an easy replacement, as long as you don’t have a proprietary one. (I’m still pissed at Dell about that and will tell the story on request.) Anyway, all you have to do is get a new one with at least the same amount of wattage and plug in all the connectors. It’s fairly obvious. Each drive gets one, the fan gets one, the motherboard probably gets one (could be more.) Just look at how it’s set up in your current system and duplicate it with the new power supply.
I dual-booted my Athlon 64 for a while with Win98. I don’t remember the boot speed for Win98, but I think it was fairly fast. The slowest part of the boot cycle I have is all the BIOS and RAID stuff anyway.
When it’s plugged in (and when you try to turn it on) listen for any noises (fans, beeps, anything) and check for any LEDs especailly on the back. A few months ago, my dad yanked the cord out of his computer and fried his PS. BTW, new PS is a VERY easy installaion. If you’ve ever replaced a card or a drive it’s not that much more difficult.
Your data should be fine. I would be very, very suprised if it was harmed. Data recovery in this case just consists on pulling out your hard drive and putting it into a working computer. That isn’t a very difficult task.
If it’s a mobo or a power supply issue, your data’s fine.
Power supplies are a snap.
Mobos are easy to replace too. However, if you don’t get an exact duplicate model, you may trouble getting your OS to boot.
It may be worth noting that in some cases, your electric utility may be liable for damage to your stuff. A claim can usually be filed at your local office.
Without knowing the specifics of this particular outage, I can say that, generally, if the outage was self-inflicted (excess load, you back your car into your own power line, etc.) or an act of god (lightning) they will not be responsible. But if the damage was due to a failure of their equipment they can be.
May be worth checking out. Especially if their is more damage than just a power supply.
Same thing happened to my Dad’s PC. It’ll be the power supply, like everyone has said it’s not an expensive thing to get fixed.
What make is the PC? My Dad’s is an emachines jobby and they have/had a reputation for flakey power supplies.
As a bit of a bump to this. The power supply must be dying when the power comes back on, anyone know why? My Dad had a surge protector on the plugboard but that didn’t do him any good.
It doesn’t really pay to get a cheapo power supply. The really low end ones can’t supply the wattage they’re rated for, and I know from recent experience they can destroy your hardware if they fail.
In case you want to know, a co-worker shares my office. Almost an hour after he shut his PC down and left last Friday, the exciting aroma of burning plastic started to fill the room. A fun 30 seconds of playing “find the electronic device that’s on fire” ensued, from which his PC was unfortunately initially excluded due to being off. I decided his PC was to blame seconds before it said “Bzzzzt, Zap, KAPOW!” as a resistor in the power supply exploded with enough force to blow two components off it’s board.
Subsequent attempts at resussitation determined that the motherboard, CPU, RAM and HD were innocent victims of this event, the latter having a chip that got hot enough to melt a little hole in the plastic casing.
Try pulling the computer apart, taking the battery out for 10-15 mins, and putting it all back together. Our computer used to not turn on after a blackout/turning the power off at the wall. The method above fixed it every time.
I had that problem two weeks ago. I removed my current power supply and on a whim tried on anther PC and it worked. Tried it back into this PC and it worked, and now everything is back to normal. It’s as though the PS just needed to be unplugged from everything. Worth a shot to try.
This is an extremely common problem I got calls on when I did PC technical support. About half the time you can resolve the issue by discharging the capacitors. Sounds technical, but it’s really easy. First unplug the power cord to the PC - either from the back of the PC or from the wall, whichever is easiest. Then disconnect all the peripherals from the various ports of the computer - monitor, keyboard, USB devices, etc. Don’t forget things possibly plugged into USB ports on front of your computer. Then (with the computer completely disconnected from power) press and hold in the power button for 60 seconds. Then plug in just the power cord and turn on the computer. If it appears to turn on, shut it back off (hold in the power button again), and then reconnect everything and try again. If it doesn’t turn on, use the process of elimination to determine which peripheral you just reconnected is keeping your computer from turning on.
There are a couple of other things to try. There should be a power switch on the back of your computer, flick it off and then back on (with the computer already unplugged). There is also often (but not always, Sony computers usually don’t have this) a toggle switch to select the voltage, 110/220. If it’s on 220, that’s the problem. If it’s not, flick it to 220 and then back to 110 (again, with the computer unplugged), this sometimes resolves issues like this after a power surge. I’d recomend doing these last two immediately after discharging capacitors while the computer is still unplugged, though at my job they usually wanted us to do these steps separately to help isolate what mihgt be wrong - if discharging the capacitors fixes the problem, it might be the power supply, it might be the motherboard, it might be some peripheral with a short plugged into the PC, but the last two steps only fix the problem if it’s specifically the power supply.
Along similar lines, many power-strip manufacturers “insure” up to $x,000 worth of gear you have plugged into their strip. They go poof with a power surge, and the manufacturer reimburses you. (Never had to try and cash in on this, so I have no idea how easy/hard the claim process is, but it’s something.)
