Possible blown power supply

[Adnams Drinker]

My main tower machine appears to have died on me without the slightest hint of a problem!

We were going away for several days last week so, eco-conscious as I am, I switched the sockets off at the wall. What I didn't do is flick the switch off on the back of the tower's power supply - but that said I've done it this way before when we've gone away and never had a problem.

Plugged the whole lot back in this morning and pressed the power button - absolutely nowt. No LEDs lit on the front of my Antec case, no fans starting up inside and most definitely no POST beep.

The whole lot - monitor, tower and laserprinter - is plugged into a four socket block. Everything else plugged into the block works fine and I've also tried plugging the tower directly into the wall socket and using a new power cable. Doesn't make any difference. Don't know if this means anything but the network port on the back of the machine is lit like it normally is when the network cable is plugged in.

With my limited grasp of these matters, my first thought is that the power supply is knackered - I'm at work at the moment and can't remember what type of power supply and its wattage I used - I'm pretty sure it was an Enermax or some other fairly good quality brand and the wattage was something like 450 to 550.

If not a dead power supply, any other ideas what it could be?

 

[shauncr91]

I'd put my money on it being a blown PSU. As for the network port being lit up, I'm fairly sure that this isnt powered off the PSU, but off the motherboards own battery.

Do you have access to a spare PSU you could try ?

 

[misterPK]

A very helpful chap on this forum has put together a PSU checking guide found here.

PK!

 

[Corasik]

Doesnt allway work, but try a battery out, cmos reset.

Disconnect system from mains, remove Cmos battery, short the cmos reset jumper, leave for 5 minutes. Return jumper to normal position, replace battery, and hope it reboots.

This used to happen every time my partners PC was disconnected from the mains, and the above fix worked every time. A simple CMOS clear without removing the battery didnt work.

Good luck.

 

[Adnams Drinker]

Thanks a lot fellas - will try a CMOS/battery solution first. Failing that, my bro has just built a new machine, so he's probably got a PSU I can scrounge off him and there's also a knackered PC in the office of similar spec to mine with a perfectly working PSU.