Daughter's pc occasionally failed to start up. Decided to open up and found tons of dust on the fan of the pc and power supply. cleaned it up and then turned on. worked. 2 days later, yesterday, she tried to turn on in the morning and, nothing. now a day later, nothing, just dead. opened up and took out the power supply (bestec atx-250-12e). has funny smell, like it over heated. some components have glue-like subtance on top of them but i don't seen any obvious signs of anything burnt.
not sure what to do next. don't want to just buy a new psupply if it might be something else. help!
If I want to fix by myself, I will buy a new power supply to replace it. Clean it up, leave the case open, frist plug in the mother board, turn on the PC, make sure all the fan are working, any smoke coming out, or funny smell etc, if it still go, turn off the pc, plug the hard drive in, try again, if it still work, keep add back those parts back one by one. My point is if no power at all, how can you tell what part is wrong.
A power supply is like 40 bucks. Don't disconnect anything else. If the power supply doesn't get it turn on, then the motherboard or RAM(not likely but possible) is bad.
Best way to test is to unplug the power on everything except for the hard drive and motherboard. Leave just one stick of Memory in there And try to boot up, if there is no power then you need the Power Supply replaced
This is not as easy as it may seem. Often on store bought PC's the powersupply is proprietary and cannot be replaced except with one from the manufacturer and they will rip you a new one with their price. It is also common for these PC's that when the powersupply goes it takes the motherboard with it. My brothers T2692 has exactly the same problem and after examining it closely (I smelled that electrical burning smell too) I found that one of the chips (south bridge I think) had a tiny crack and a slight oozing from it. Your best bet at this point (if your handy) would be to reuse the case, drives, and memory and rebuild the unit with a new motherboard, processor (you can possibly use the old one if you can find a board that is compatible) and powersupply. The advantages here are enormous. The case will look the same but there are no limits to what you can create. Want Pci express and an Amd 64bit processor, your options are endless. If your not handy, maybe you or your daughter know someone who is and could offer some guidance. Newegg.com is a good online place to look for replacement parts but not for e-machines or any proprietary PC's.
yea it sounds like you blew some capacitors on the motherboard. Thats really bad news and your motherboard is dead. And like Ken said the power supply on custom pc's that you can build yourself come with fuses in them to prevent damage to the motherboard in the case of a power surge. Meaning if you built your own pc the power surge will have not gone to the motherboard.
Sounds like you need a new pc. If you want to learn to build one you can find tutorials at cnet.com and a lot of other places however building your own pc is challenging and time consuming. However rewarding nonetheless.
If its your daughters however I would get an HP, go to Bestbuy and get the advanced security package and the 3 year warranty. It would be a lot less hassle and will be gauranteed for three years. (except software) Also HP has some of the highest reliability of every pc manufacturer and they're not completely worthless like dell has become in recent years. Also all the new ones have PCI express slots on them (for advanced graphics) and get an AMD 64 3200+ or higher and you should be more then good to go. Also you can get a package deal with a monitor that will last you awhile and it will come with a printer.
hello, i seem to have a similar proble with our e machine model t2692 bought on the day after thanks giving in 2003. first it was the power button. it won't turn off/on. some times the HDD light comes on, sometimes not. keep hearing a light whirring noise inside. all the time fan keeps running. sometimes get a smell like an elec. odor. it could be the power supply.but dont know for sure.any one has any ideas, what to do next, is this common, should i get it fixed, or just look for a new/used one??? as you can see, i'm all confused....pls help...