Computer not starting up!

H

herbjr

Geek Trainee
I didnt know where to post this so i decided here. Sorry if i am incorrect.

I wanted to know if someone would be able to help me with a little problem of mine. My class, in school, has a few dell desktops. However, some of them wont work. When the power button is pressed, the pc lights up, begins to start but then shuts off before it can do anything. As quickly as it turns on, it turns off.

I dont know if the computers have a virus or what. I was thinking that if it didnt, then it may be a hardware problem. Maybe the power supply have gone up. I dont know. I took look inside and everything seems to be well connected. The cords connected to the plug and power supply are also fine.

Do anyone know what this may be? Or whats causing this to happen? If so, please let me know. If you dont mind, i would like for the replies be sent to my email so that i would receive solutions quicker and be able to deal with this problem. Thanks in advance.

Email: (herbjr [at] t mail [dot] com)
 
Sorry, I'm not going to email you the answer but hopefully you look at this thread again.

Your problem is absolutely not associated with malware (virus and/or spyware). However, there are several different pieces of hardware that could be failing. If you have any extra parts, you could narrow down the problem by what techs refer to as "part swapping" which is where you replace a part with a known working part to see if the problem goes away. Here are some things to check:
  • Open the case and check for leaking or bulging capacitors. These are the battery shaped objects sitting perpendicular to the motherboard. This would indicate a bad motherboard.
  • Unplug everything you dont absolutely need (leave only motherboard, one stick of RAM, and a display device if not onboard) and see if it stays powered on. If it works, plug things in one by one (when powered off) and see which part is causing the failure.
  • Depending on how long it stays on, go to the BIOS (usually F2 on dells) and check the cpu tempurature. Anything above 40 celcius is too hot. If its in the 70s, it is more than likely overheating.
  • Swap out the Power Supply with a known working one and see it it stays on.
 
I agree with Fred, but in my opinion the power supply should be first on your list to test.
 
Oops... I didn't actually mean to put the list in a particular order. I should have paid more attention to detail. But yeah, the main points of the list are to check for bad capacitors (mobo), PSU, and RAM. I agree though, failing PSU seems very likely to be the problem here.
 
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