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Computer has stopped powering on

S

Sidane

n00b
Joined
Apr 6, 2003
Messages
59
Hi,
Hoping somebody can help me, I'm fairly desperate at this stage.

I have the rig as seen in my signature. It was turned on without any problems last night. Turned it off in the normal way, then this afternoon when I pressed the power button nothing happened. Literally nothing, as if there was no power connected.

There is power going to the motherboard, the little green light near the bottom is on. I've removed various components (vid card, sound card, hard drives, optical drives, RAM) and still nothing.

I remember not long after I built the rig something like this happened and it was down to one of the power connectors touching the metal of the case frame. Once I moved the connector it powered on as normal. I've made sure the same isn't happening this time.

So I'm at a complete loss as to what the problem could be.

When I opened the case I did find a couple of screws for mounting the motherboard had fallen out and were lying at the bottom of the case. For whatever reason, not all the screws thread properly so are very loose. This isn't the first time they've fallen out. Could a screw have fallen out last night and damaged something?

It was quite dusty inside when I opened it up. A pretty thick layer of dust on the heatsink and around the north bridge, which I've cleaned out. But as stated, the computer has been running without a hitch for the last year or so.

Anybody have any idea what could be wrong or steps I could take to track down the problem?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.
 
if screws are loose, you don't put them back in if they stay loose, lol. they obviously don't fit, so get bigger ones. i'm guessing a screw fell and shorted something out. take everything out of the case and place the mobo on a cardboard box. plugin only the cpu+hsf, one stick of ram, vidcard, and power supply, and see if it posts. use a screwdriver to short the two power switch leads. report back.
 
enginurd you're my hero. Did as you advised and it powered on and posted.

Mobo, psu, video card and cpu are in working order so the issue is elsewhere.

It may well be something as simple as a broken power button on the case!

So next step - get it powering on inside the case?

Thanks for your help, was starting to despair until you posted (pardon the pun)! :)
 
Thanks plasma but don't think that's the issue.

The core components are back in the case (bigger screws for mobo :)) and i reconnected the power button and it's turning on and off just fine now. So that's v good news. I'm going to start adding one component at a time until hopefully everything is working again (or I find the borked component).

Thanks again for the help, will let you know how it turns out.
 
All's well that ends well - machine running as normal again, all components in. Very odd though, dunno what caused it in the first place.

Might well have been the loose motherboard. Have used larger screws so it's well anchored to the case now. Touch wood it won't happen again.

Thanks for your assistance enginurd.
 
Hehe, glad you got it working again. It was most likely a short, probably due to one of the loose screws. I've seen it happen before.
 
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