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Computer won't boot/shut down.

I'm trying to troubleshoot a problem with a relative's computer. She has an Emachine (about 3 years old) and stated that her computer would not shut itself down. Even if she unplugs the machine from the wall outlet, the computer instantly tries to come on. She doesn't even have time to hit the switch.

So, I'm thinking switch/power supply??

But.....she also says that the green (hard drive?) light is constantly on and that the computer won't get past the blue screen. Just gibberish

- no logo, no boot up, nothing.

So is this a motherboard problem??? Maybe both???

Any info is appreciated. Thanks

Reply to
hdivr
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May well be a victim of this:

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Reply to
Ray L. Volts

Not restricted to motherboards, power supplies suffer badly, i open all power supplies which are trashed by a local computer shop (if they are recent and 300W or more), i find bulged caps in

70% of the cases and in about all of those cases replacing the bad caps fixes the power supply. Just did 3 450W gold edition PSU's.

Bart Bervoets

Reply to
Bart Bervoets

Hi: I just visited this badcaps site. It reminded me of a board that was given to me that would trip the power supply. It turned out in the end, a tantalum cap was shorted, because it was backward, because the silkscreen was backward! I bet a lot of those boards went to waste.

Thanks! HarryHydro

Bart Bervoets wrote:

Reply to
HarryHydro

Hi: I just visited this badcaps site. It reminded me of a board that was given to me that would trip the power supply. It turned out in the end, a tantalum cap was shorted, because it was backward, because the silkscreen was backward! I bet a lot of those boards went to waste.

Thanks! HarryHydro

Bart Bervoets wrote:

Reply to
HarryHydro

yep.. I recently elected not to overhaul a 300 watter which had the bulged caps (for my own pc) because I happened to have a brand new 450W that came with a new case I bought, but had replaced it with a better Antec supply at time of pc build. A new replacement 300W same model is only about $16+ tax now, but the large filter caps for the thing run around $7 each! So, I would have bought a new

300W anyway. Sometimes it's just more cost effective not to put time/labor into an overhaul -- even when it's your own unit. :) But luckily I had that spare supply, so I'm basically out no cost & no labor on this one. Did restuff the old Abit mobo with new caps, though. Digi-Key is a great supplier of oddball cap sizes. If they're out of one brand of the cap needed, they likely have another brand available -- or maybe I was just lucky. They're efficient, too. I ordered my mobo caps (cheap in quantity!) + other odd items. Was well over a hundred parts in total. Ordered in the morning and they shipped the package out that afternoon! And the order was correct -- that alone seems rare these days in general.
Reply to
Ray L. Volts

On 31 Jul 2006 12:18:21 -0700, "HarryHydro" put finger to keyboard and composed:

I once saw this in a mainframe card. The tantalum cap was involved in the CPU power-on-reset circuit. Customers stated that they had to switch their machines on and off several times before all the affected cards would power up correctly. Some machines had 6 cards.

- Franc Zabkar

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Reply to
Franc Zabkar

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