Before I take my desktop for repair...
 

The story from my wife is that my son powered down our Dell studio desktop (using the power button)and it simply won't power up.

Any troubleshooting techniques I can use before I take it to a shop?

with PC, one symptom can be caused by a ton of issues.

Straight up no power after working fine? Likely the power supply


switch it out with a known working one, if it comes on and works correctly, order you a cheap power supply and call it good. You can get a power supply that will last several years in the 25ish dollar range. If you want a nice one, plan on spending 60-80. In your case, some pre-built dell? Go with the cheapy :P

Be a ton cheaper than taking it in.

If you where local I would do it for you :(

don't take it to best buy
if it's PS you're looking at more than $150 probably, maybe even $200

Need more info.

Won't power up as in no lights no sounds no electricity?

green light in back near a/c cord

Do you hear any beeps when you hit the power button or just nothing at all?

Nothing happening on screen? No sounds?

no sound, no fan, no beeps, just a green light near power cord in back

turn off the power source switch, unplug it for 10 seconds, plug it back in, turn on power source switch again, then turn it on at the regular computer power button

Save yourself the trouble and switch the power supply with a known working one. Takes 5 minutes. If it boots, there ya go.

By his description of the situation, there's no chance in hell he has a spare power supply sitting around...

I guess that's possible.. but I figure there is one in the computer he is posting from~

I guess it could be his phone. :)

Most likely either a dead power supply or dead motherboard.

Is the green light physically on the same piece of metal that you plug the power cord into? There should be a square section where the power cord plugs in. If the light in physically on that part, then that could indicate that the power supply is working and has voltage, but the motherboard is fried. Or it could be the light from the motherboard, in which it's still hard to tell whether it would be the power supply or the motherboard.

I remember once my laptop wouldn't power up. Click the power button and, literally, nothing happened.

Turns out I had to do some really weird shit like hold the power button down for 30 seconds then remove and reinsert the battery. I could be remembering that wrong as it was a long time ago, but I remember for sure that I had to hold the power button down for an extended time.

It worked just fine after that though. Very, very strange.

I'll upload a pic in a bit.

I'm working from a lap top at the moment

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/13/11/19/7unehupu.jpghere's the ac cord and green light.

ok, so psu has power and is operational. that's good.

take the cover off of the case and see if any leds are lit on the motherboard

Just because the light is on does not mean the PSU is functioning correctly.

In fact more often than not, a dead PSU will still light up the mobo but just wont POST.



OP, when you open the case up there will be a watch battery in there somewhere.

Pull it out for 30 seconds, then put it back. Then try pressing the front power button. This will clear your BIOS back to stock.

Yeah, that light simply means the power supply is getting voltage. Not necessarily providing voltage to the mobo. Still possible that the power supply is dead.

But my guess is that the mobo is kaput...

no joy...


Would the motherboard have any say about what components get power (fans, CD-ROM)?

It depends. Some case fans plug directly into the power supply and would work despite a broken motherboard. But everything plugged into the motherboard would be completely dead if it is in fact the mobo that's at fault.

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/13/11/19/e6yja7u4.jpg

The psu appears to have a fan built in (my novice eye). It's not running.

Yeah. But it won't run without the computer being on with everything working. So that doesn't really mean anything.

See if you can find the cluster of wires from the power supply to the motherboard. Looks like this:

http://www.karbosguide.com/books/pca...images/979.jpg

Unplug that for a few minutes, and plug it back in. Then try to power it up. Sometimes I've seen that work...

GAH! it looks like its wedged underneath my CD ROM

Well it likely won't be a magical fix, so don't put too much effort into it. But I've seen it happen before.....

In this case, I think it is more and more likely its the power supply.

If not, its the mobo.

If its the mobo, forget the POS dell, buy a new computer. If you take it in to get fixed it will come away as what you could pay for a 'brand name' computer

Well fellas, turns out it was the power supply. Got one from ebay for $25 and now she's up and runnin'!

CP comes through again!

Post #2. I love being right.:)

Hey fellas I need some cp help with my home build. The other day I went to turn it on and the fans and lights come on, but the screen is blank, and neither the mouse or the keyboard light up. I checked the mouse and keyboard with my old computer and they are fine. The monitor says its not getting any input, so I believe it is fine as well. I just built this about six months ago, is it possible that the motherboard is bad already? Is there a way to check without taking the whole thing apart?


PLEASE HEEEEEELLLLLP!!!

Power supply :/

its possible the mobo is bad, but switch the power supply out for a known working one and see what happens, my money is that it boots up and works fine.

Before you do that, try resetting the BIOS as well, pull the little battery out of the mobo for a few seconds. Then replace it.

couple things

turn everything off, including main power switch on PSU and then unplug hard drive from Mobo. Try starting it up without a hard drive connected and see if it will go into the setup program(F10 or F1 button usually. It says it on screen during bootup).

That will eliminate the hard drive and software possibilities.


another thing

turn everything off again, pull mobo battery(looks like a watch battery)

Then hit the reset button on the mobo. Sometimes it a jumper switch. This will reset all the CPU and memory speed settings in case something got messed up.

put battery back and plug everything in and try to start it up

If its a hard drive it should still POST though.

I did that and it went to the boot screen. I have two hard drives one is a SSD. It only went to that screen with both of them unplugged. Am I going to lose all my shit?

so it started up without the hard drive? Did you make it into the Bios?

If so then it's either Hard drive mechanical failure or software corruption.

I supposed it could be bad memory that fails when it starts loading up windows.

Do you have an old hard drive you can stick in there to test it out?

You might also try putting the OS disk(windows?) into the DVD player and starting it up like that. Make sure the DVD player is the 1st boot option.

I wouldn't recommend a novice to **** around with jumpers unless he's going to take the time to read the manual for his mobo.

I did that once.....fried the mobo.....learned the hard way.

I don't know how much he understands or is familiar with ... just giving him suggestions.

If he doesn't understand then he should limit his choices.

I don't know anything about jumpers or any of that. I unplugged both harddrives and it went to the bios. The other computer I have is super duper old and the connections are not the same so I can't test with it.

I'll try using the dvd drive to boot it. I have class tonight so I can't do it until later on, but I will and I will keep you up to date.

Thank you very much for your help

Ive had similar to that problem before both times was caused by a bum windows update.

If you have a Windows repair or startup disk pop it in and reboot thru dvd drive you may have to f10 into bios and set to boot cd 1st. then reboot and let windows repair load and select repair startup. Let it do its thing if it in the end asks you to roll back to a time it last worked and you dont want do that reboot again. Then F 8 as it starts up see if you can get into a safe mode boot up with networking. Go to control panel delete software select show windows updates. Remove any win updates that may have occurred on the day that you lost computing. Then run your virus scanner and also use a good Malware remover such as Malwarebytes its fee. Then try and reboot.

Also if its HDMI check the cable to see if its slipped out or better yet change it out with a known working cable

Also, I failed to mention on all your reboots dc the power for a minute or so .

I will try that also, thank you.

Edit: I just remembered seeing an update right before I powered down last time. I will check both recommendations tonight. Thank you guys again

sure ... just trying to find out whether it's Hardware or Software problem.

It's good that it boots to bios

Does the computer beep at all when you turn it on?

Many times the number, frequency, and length of the beeps are codes for certain types of errors.

No beeps

I put the boot disk in and started the repair, but then I realized I didn't plug in the hard drive. Then I plugged in the hard drive, but it wouldn't let me do the repair just the install. I chose install and it went a few screens then said i need to restart without the disc. I did that and it started working!! I went and got malwarebytes and it picked up a couple threats. I tried to unistall the updates but nothing happened.

Thank you guys so much for helping me with this. I'm not sure how it just started working, but thank you. I'm running a full scan now before bed.

Thanks again

Happy to hear that whatever ya did fixed it.

Thank you, you guys are nothing short of awesome.

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