PC will not turn on

[admiral51]

Hello,
My 3 year old system will not turn on. The other day I shut down normally after having the system on for the weekend. Yesterday I tried to turn it on by pressing the power button and nothing. It was working without an issues prior to this.
When I tried to turn it on there were no sounds or strange smells that might be a give away that something bad happened.

Is there a checklist I follow for things to try to figure out what is happening ( or not happening in this case)?

I have tried checking the voltage on the power cord and that was ok. I tried moving the power cord from the UPS to a regular wall outlet.
I then tried disconnecting the disk and DVD drive power connectors and there was no change.
I left it unplugged over night and no change. I checked the CMOS battery and it was over 3 volts.

All I see is an LED on the ASUS motherboard, no fans spin up. The power supply is a thermaltake 700w. The rest of the specs are at home, mostly in the system that will not power up. The system was not overclocked.

thanks
bob

 

[rolli59]

Most likely the PSU or the motherboard gone bad. You can though try taking the power switch from the case of its connectors and short the two pins out with a screwdriver, if that works it is a bad power switch. Next test the PSU by the paperclip method http://www.overclock.net/faqs/96712-how-jump-start-power-supply-psu.html
if it turns on then most likely the motherboard.

 

[tsnor]

"All I see is an LED on the Asus motherboard, no fans spin up"

So you are getting power.

re" Is there a checklist I follow for things to try "
Asus used to have a 'step by step' for debugging failed systems on their website for each MB model. I think it was intended for use in new builds, but you could follow it.

The major thrust was pull out everything until you have a known 'good state' (for example, you have no memory and the bios beeps "no memory") then add back parts until you are working. I've seen a slightly lose PCI card cause symptoms like this (the system started posting when card was removed and then when the card was added back the system continued to post correctly..)

Good luck.

 

[admiral51]

Thank s to everyone who replied.

The unit was getting partial power, but even with all the drives and video card out of the system the fans would not spin up.

I did manage to get the power supply fan to spin up when I took it out and used the paper clip test.

With a new power supply the unit booted right up and wanted the BIOS setting done. That took a few tries to get the right boot disk but everything is working again.

thanks again for the quick responses.

bob

 

[admiral51]

the old PSU was a thermaltake 700w and I replaced it with a thermaltake 850w.
The 700w was not in stock and the 850 was only a few dollars more on newegg.

 

[admiral51]

Best answer selected by admiral51.