Things are never easy around here

[Scott Douglas]

My wife's computer, the newer one that is just like the one I'm on now (yes, I bought two of them thinking they were a good deal), is having problems booting up this morning. It is turning on then almost immediately shutting off. I'm not sure if it's a hard drive or pwr supply problem.

As I'm unhooking it from the setup I have so she can use two different computers with the same monitor/keyboard/mouse, I'm trying to think of how to test it to see which is the problem, the HD or the pwr supply.

I'm in the act of getting her old computer 'on-line' safely as it hasn't been connected to the internet since Feb of this year. She needs it for her sewing programs which won't work on Win 10 and I didn't want it to update 'automatically' on me so I cut it off from the outside world.

Just as I'm about to update Win Defender, we have a power outage.

WTF?

Power is back on, for now, Win Defender is updated (took a while to download 9 months of updates) and she's back on-line with the old computer for now.

My next dilemma is that the old monitor I have as a spare sitting out in the garage has an old VGA connector and DVI also. This newer computer only has HDMI out's for the monitor.

So, do I buy a cable to hook it up, get a new monitor and sub in one of the ones we're currently using for the diagnostics or just go buy her a new computer altogether?

What would you guys do?
She really wants a new Windows 7, 8.1 machine but those are like hens teeth these days I suspect.
I'd love to get her back to just ONE machine.

[pwd72s]

Remember that computers are here to make our lives easier.

[Scott Douglas]

OK, here's what I've done to try to determine if it's pwr supply or HD that is bad.
I borrowed my cable for the monitor to my computer so I'd have a way of seeing something on screen.
That worked well when I subbed in a known good hard drive to her computer box. Only problem was it went to the 'recovery' section of the drive and was asking for a REALLY old password from I don't know how many computers ago.
I tried rebooting and tried to get around that by pressing f12 to get to the bios menu. The computer froze and then started acting the same way it did originally this morning. Pwr button lights, momentarily, then shuts off. I tried pwring on with the computer opened up and the fan makes an effort to spin when the pwr button is pushed but just rocks back to the original position when everything shuts down again.
Is this acting like it might be the pwr switch itself?
I think her HD is fried though because of what is going on. When I put it in my auxiliary HD case and power it on, it doesn't come up on file manager the way my other drives do.
Suggestions are welcome on how to test the power supply without killing myself, as well as testing the pwr button switch itself.

[flipper35]

For the old monitor you can get an HDMI-DVI cable.

I would unplug everything in the old computer and go to the BIOS/UEFI and see if there is a RAM diagnostic to run. You can unhook the power switch as well and jump the two pins briefly to start it up. The power switch on all modern computers is a momentary switch.

The swapped HD will not like being in different hardware so you can put that back where it was. You can do your power supply testing just in the BIOS/UEFI. Usually F2 or DEL when booting.

Could be the PS itself. You can swap those out to see.

[Scott Douglas]

I borrowed the HDMI-DVI cable from my computer so the monitor isn't going to be a problem. I don't want to invest in another cable.
By unplug everything in the old computer, what do you mean by that?
Unplug the CD-ROM drive?
That's about all there is on these computers.
I swapped in the older HD just to see if the pwr supply was working, which it did for a while, then it started acting up again.
If I remove the wires from the pwr switch on the motherboard and jump the pins there will that start the computer and eliminate the switch?

I don't have any spare pwr supplies laying around to swap out. :>(

[flipper35]

Sorry, I thought you had two identical computers.

Yes, you can pull the power switch and jump the pins to eliminate that as an issue.

I would unplug everything the PS is connected to other than the motherboard. You probably have an auxiliary power connector on the motherboard as well that is 4 pins. Check all those connections.

Does this computer have on board video or a discreet video card?

[Scott Douglas]

Yes, I do have two identical computers but I'm not going to take this good one apart to test the other.

It has an AMD Radeon RX 580X 4GB GDDRV video card in it. Big sucker that almost fooled me thinking it was the MB.

[Scott Douglas]

Here's what I'm looking at...

[Scott Douglas]

As near as I can make out, the pwr switch connector is this one, but it has four wires, not two.

[Scott Douglas]

So I did some checking and it turns out the computer is still under warranty until 12/05/2020.
Guess I'll be taking it back to the store or wherever Acer tells me to take it for repair since it's a 'walk-in warranty'.

[Scott Douglas]

Finally heard back from Acer on this computer problem. They want me to ship the box to Texas for the warranty work. That ain't happening since I can't delete all our sensitive data from the HD because I can't get it to work. The old catch 22 type of thing.
So, I got in touch with Micro-Center and they want $40 to diagnose the problem and they're really busy so it could take a week.
In the mean time, I'm sitting here thinking that with help I can get this thing back up and running cheaper than taking it somewhere.
I subbed in a known good HD and while it asked for a really old password I think the power supply heated up enough for the problem to surface as it started to cycle on/off just like it did with the original HD.
I guess what I'm asking for here is some support for fixing this thing.
I think the basic computer is pretty decent, they just cheaped out on some of the 'support' hardware, like the power supply. If the HD is toast I can live with that as I'm thinking an SSD would make this work a lot better for the intended user.

[Scott Douglas]

Here is the sticker on the side of the power supply:



What is the important thing to look for in a replacement?

[Shifter]

Generally the brief power light and fan twitch is a post (power on self test) failure.
Meaning the motherboard/cpu failed its power test, and won't allow the power supply to turn on.

Unplug the hard drive and see if you have the same issue. If you do, remove the hard drive, and ship it in for repair, letting them know it is coming without a hard drive. They don't need the hard drive to repair a hardware failure.

[Scott Douglas]

Ah, that makes perfect sense!
Thanks for that Shifter, very much appreciated.

[Shifter]

To answer the question on the power supply, you would want a 500 watt ATX power supply.

If you want to test the power supply, here a way to turn it on when it is not plugged into the mother board.

https://www.instructables.com/How-to-power-up-an-ATX-Power-Supply-without-a-PC/

[Scott Douglas]

So, without the hard drive installed I should be able to power it on and get to the bios menu, correct?

[flipper35]

That is correct.

[flipper35]

If it had onboard video you could remove the video card as well to eliminate that.

Does the fan run on the video card when it does power on?

[Scott Douglas]

OK, I need to get my tablet going so I can use this computers cable on the broken one.
Back in a minute.

[Scott Douglas]

Dang saved passwords will be the death of me!