Faulty PSU - or more serious?

[meeja]

Dad called me with the usual "My PC isn't working" last night.

"Typical!" thinks me...... maybe I'll plug the keyboard back in and all will be fine (as usual)

This time though, there actually IS a problem!

PC won't power up.

On removing the covers, the processor fan kicks in as soon as the mains is applied (ie switched on at the wall NOT switched on at the PC)

The power switch on the PC does nothing.

I tested the outputs on the PSU, and got readings that appeared to match the details of which colour cable shoud have which voltage, with the exception of purple. According to the PSU housing, this should have been +5VsDC (I think!) but it was reading 1v.

Before I start spending any cash on new PSU's, can anyone confirm my suspicion that I have a faulty PSU?

[arcturus]

Does sound very much like the PSU. Do you have another unit you can borrow one from to test it?

[meeja]

Not easily unfortunately..... may be able to strip mine down at home, and nick the PSU from that to test.

[Plotloss]

Take out the memory first and put it back one stick at a time.

Does it beep at all?

Could be PSU could be a hardware failure.

My money is on

Memory
PSU
VGA

In that order.

Well maybe swapping PSU and Memory

[HarryW]

recently had a bit of experience in this area at home I don't want to worry you but.........Video card fan ceased blowing the PSU , changed them both still wasn't right... it had damaged the motherboard too .
I now have basically a new PC, rude not to upgrade it whilst there though. A 3.2P4 with GbLan mit 533Mhz DDR2 RAM and PCI-E video card, I'm sure the kids did it deliberately .

Harry

[_Dobbo_]

Same thing happened to me - I went out and bought a beast of an Athlon 64 3800+ with dual SLI graphics cards, then thought I'd have a go at replacing the PSU in the old PC. 11 quid later and it was running perfectly again. So maybe I didn't need to spend the £1200 on the new one... oops!


Still I'm not sorry, since the new machine is blisteringly fast!

[meeja]

Is now confirmed that the PSU is faulty (Phew - no need for a new motherboard then!)

I doubt that the video card caused the problem, as it is a very basic jobbie!

[meeja]

New PSU installed (£11!)

All working fine, and I now have a relieved father.

(Every time he gets a computer problem of any description, he is always convinced that he will have lost all of his files - despite the fact that he does a daily backup onto CD!!)