Thread: Anyone have a good knowledge of computers? Namely hardware

Had this computer since like 2007, hp pavilion slimline s3600z

Never had an issue with it, turned it off last night to go to bed, shut down normally, came home from work and tried to turn it on and it won't turn on. After 20 minutes on the phone with hp, the Indian I could barely understand told me she couldn't start to help me until I payed 25 dollars for a help session... So I said no thanks bye!

Power led on the back of the case turns on solid when I plug it in, no sort of response at all when the power button is pressed. No storms today, all other stuff in the house works fine. Tried a different outlet, tried a different cord and checked all the circuit breakers, no change.

Halp I need my computer

well i would start by checking if the power supply died. if there power there may be dead mobo.

Can you take the battery out of the computer?

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It's a desktop, shoulda said that...

The led light is on solid at the back when I plug it in, turns off oike 5 seconds after i unplug itdoes that mean the power supply is good?

Would be awesome if the power supply died lol

little green light staying on and shutting off? it should stay on from past expericnes with power supply

It stay on solid until I unplug it. If I unplug it the light goes out after like 5 seconds.

power supply is good, is he button maybe not responding to your push? if you have some knwoledge you could take it apart and turn the power on maually

harddrive eat itself i will put money on it

There's no response at all when I press the power button, all peripherals unplugged and only the power cord. Power led on the back stays lit at all times, no fan action, no drive action, no sounds, no change in led.

If the hdd destroyed itself, wouldn't I atleast get some power response from the fans or something?

Yeah, if the hdd was bad, you would still have the other components respomd.

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Do you know where the power button connects to the motherboard? Unhook it and try jumping the 2 pins with a screwdriver.

Are there any LED's lit up on the motherboard? It looks like you either corrupted the BIOS or its completely fried. Usually the system will at least beep or an LED will light up if you press the power button. When you see the manufacturer logo after trying to power on the PC this is what we call "Posting". If the system doesn't POST then your BIOS would be at fault. If however the system doesn't beep or turn on one of the motherboards LEDs it is most likely fried 99.9% of the time. Also check if the RAM could be currupted. To do this take all RAM memory sticks out of there slots then reinsert just 1. The system only needs one RAM stick to boot up. Try this with all RAM sticks because just one currupt stick will halt system operation. Report back with what you find. If you find you need a new computer you should try building one, never a better time to learn. Its cheaper and you get what you want :-)

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I've gotten some other opinions elsewhere, and some of them have said that if the motherboard was the issue, I'd atleast be seeing some kind of action in the power supply fan. This is because the power supply fan isnt powered through the motherboard or any external wiring, it's directly from the power supply.

Is that true? Im trying to figure out how to best handle this.

I would doublecheck the power on switch, but I'm guessing you have a bad power supply.

I'd go through these steps to doublecheck, make sure your not missing any beeps or light flashes for that unit that may tell you something more.
Computer Does Not Start (Windows Vista) HP Pavilion Slimline s3600z CTO Desktop PC | HP® Support

Originally Posted by FoSHO99

I would doublecheck the power on switch, but I'm guessing you have a bad power supply.

I'd go through these steps to doublecheck, make sure your not missing any beeps or light flashes for that unit that may tell you something more.
Computer Does Not Start (Windows Vista) HP Pavilion Slimline s3600z CTO Desktop PC | HP® Support

So I have the power supply out, had to take the entire innards of the computer out because it's such a small compact case, lol.

Now that I have this out, is there any way to test this without a voltmeter or something? Like a way to turn it on? I see now that power switch goes to the motherboard first, then the motherboard tells the power supply to turn on, so it could be a motherboard causing the issue even though the power supply is getting power.. it's not getting the signal to turn on maybe if the mb is bad...

To narrow down.

Bad Powersupply

Bad Motherboard.

If the the CPU was out it would power on and not go to boot
If the ram was out it would go to post and error for bad ram
If harddrive was out it would post and say no harddrive
If card was out it would load up but no video.

So need to test the powersupply and make sure it's getting power at all points. I've seen them light up but not put enough power to drive the board. You could probably take it out and go to a local computer repair place and they could test it real quick just to be sure. I have a plug in meter to check them but I live too far away ahaha.

Power-supply troubleshooting with a multimeter | TechRepublic

This should help if you have a volt-meter and want to test yourself