PC wont turn on - any ideas?

DonkeyKong77

Hello

A friends PC will not swich on at all , i had a quick look yesterday and nearly gave up because i couldn't get the casing of the tower off! :rolleyes: , but there doesn't seem to be any disconnected wires inside.

I will try a different power lead, but i don't think it's that, as power is getting to the monitor - it's the same lead, there is just an on/off switch at the back of the pc to turn the power to the monitor on and off.

Any suggestions would be most helpful.

BillScarab

Possibly a dead PSU? I take it you are getting nothing at all on the screen, not even anything from the BIOS?

DonkeyKong77

yep, there was nothing at all.

Someone mentioned ages ago, that (for something else) you may need to replace a "watch type battery", i did that as well, but that didn't seem to work either. Unless it's not in properly, i will check that again possibly.

MickMack

Possibly a dead PSU,
Does anything other than the monitor power up.
Can you hear if the hard-disk (or dvd/cd or fans) is spinning up.
The "watch type battery" is for maintaining the state of the BIOS, even if this was dead i would expect power to get to the hard-disk and CD/DVD drives (how old is the PC, if its not that old then it wont be this battery as they should last for years).

DonkeyKong77

nope, no noise or spinning/whirring parts. The PC is going on for more than 7/8 years i think. There wasn't any power cut or strange way in which it had shut down, last time it was used.

That's 2 votes for the problem being with the PSU. Are these expensive to repair?

How would that happen - is it just wear and tear? They don't use it much other than for schoolwork and the odd bit of browsing, so they don't really want to get a new one if they don't have to.

MickMack

I think PSUs are fairly cheap to buy, sometimes they can fail just because of age, also sometimes they can have a buildup of dust and stuff inside them and this causes their fan to burn out because it gets stuck which leads to them overheating or just gradually going down hill over time.
If you can get the right replacement PSU then it should be a 5 min job to change it over.

What you might be able to do is if you have another pc you could take the covers off both pcs and connect the Main motherboard connector from the working pc into the nonworking one (you should be able to do this without having to remove anything else if your lucky) that way you will be sure that its the PSU before you go to the trouble and expense of replacing it.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/350-Watt-ATX-Low-Noise-PC-PSU-Power-Supply-Unit-350W_W0QQitemZ270112748520QQihZ017QQcategoryZ42020QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

BillScarab

You need to have a look at the PSU and see what power output it is. Then buy a similar one. If it's that old it may be worth looking for an old PC on freecycle to cannibalise.