Computer died!! Is this a power supply problem?

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jimflint1

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Hi. This is the story. In the middle of my son using the computer, it just shut down. I came down to the room where it was a minute later, tried flipping the master switch on the surge protector off and on, then pressed to power button on the case. It started up. A few minutes later my son called me again because it had shut down again. The former trick didn't work. Here's what I've tried:

Flipping the I/O switch on the power supply both ways and trying to power up.
Unplugging the power supply from the surge protector and plugging it with another cord directly into the wall outlet. Then flipping that I/O switch again.

Nothing happened. Does this sound like it's the power supply?
 
I`m afraid it does sound like the psu has gone bad.

However, the only way to tell for sure, is to try another psu, and hope that`s all it is.

Regards Howard :)
 
Hi Howard. Thanks for your help. I rushed to Circuit City and bought a cheap MadDog power supply, and installed it. It worked. However there are still some issues. For example, when I first started the comp again, the colors on screen were terrible, the resolution was extremely poor. My comp wanted to reinstall my printer. I restarted in safe mode in which the colors were perfect. I then restarted in normal and got good resolution, but about 3/4 of the icons that formerly were on my desktop have vanished--the words that were underneath them are still there, but the icons went away. Any thoughts?

Shane
 
Maybe when the old psu went down, it has corrupted your windows installation somewhat.

Double click my computer, and right click on your hard drive, and select properties.

Now select tools, and in the error checking box click on check now. Make sure to tick the box that says automatically fix file system errors, and click start.

You will be prompted to schedual a disk check next time you restart your computer. Click yes, then restart your system.

After the system has restarted, and the disk check is complete, you computer will reboot.

If after doing the above you still have problems, then maybe doing a Windows repair will help. Instructions for this can be found HERE

Please be aware, that if you do a Windows repair, you will need to update your Windows again, as doing a repair will wipe all your current updates.

Please let us know how you get on.

Regards Howard :)
 
If all seems well and it's just the icon pictures that are gone, before doing a repair install, try flushing your icon cache. Do so by simply deleting the file called "iconcache.db" from your profile folder.
Check this out:
http://www.smartcomputing.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles/archive/l0806/39l06/39l06.asp

The file is C:\DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\ USERNAME\LOCAL SETTINGS\APPLICATION DATA\IconCache.db
Where username is your own user name. Delete it then restart. Your icon pics should come back.
 
howard_hopkinso said:
Maybe when the old psu went down, it has corrupted your windows installation somewhat.


Please let us know how you get on.

Thanks, Howard. My Windows installation has been somewhat corrupted for a few months now--I'm just biding my time to do a complete reformat and reinstall. I've done the repair install a couple of times, but that hasn't fixed the problems I'm having. My main problem seems to be that I'm unable to access the "Help" section of windows. I've gone through all the "start service" helps and no dice. Anyway, I appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions.

Shane
 
Vigilante said:
If all seems well and it's just the icon pictures that are gone, before doing a repair install, try flushing your icon cache. Do so by simply deleting the file called "iconcache.db" from your profile folder.

Thanks Vigilante--that brought my icons back. Now I just need to take the case apart and find out why my two cdroms aren't working--I probably just knocked a cable loose or something.

Shane
 
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