PC will not power on

[DTro]

I have an older emachine tower that sits in the basement and I basically just use it on the network to serve a couple of printers and as a place to dump archive type files on from the network as backup when using my laptop.

Today I tried printing and it didn't work, normally that means we had a power outage or something and I just need to go turn it on again.

I see that the power light was blinking and I could not get a response at all by pushing or holding the power button. So I unplugged it for a few minutes and plugged it back in. This time when I pushed the power button I could hear the fans spin up for about 2 seconds and then shut off. The power light was once again blinking. I can repeat this by unplugging and plugging back in.

That's about as far as I can get.

[aanderud]

Could easily be a power supply. I've seen them fail on countless machines. I might have a spare you can borrow to test it out. I have spares of most things. I had to replace the power supply in both my mom's desktop machine and my mother-in-law's desktop machine in the last few years so I can't guarantee that I have a spare but I think I do. If nothing else I know I have a functional one you could borrow out of a working PC just to test it.

[nofishfisherman]

If you are near the Minneapolis area you could swing by General Nanosystems on University just west of 280. You can just walk in and they'll have a tech trouble shoot it for you right on the spot. The diagnostic is free and occasionally if its a simple fix I've seen them fix stuff for free as well. I took my computer there when the power supply went bad so they could test it for me. I ended up buying the new power supply from them and just had them put it in for me right away as wel since the tower was already opened and everything. I think total was maybe $60-70 for parts and labor. Of course its not hard to do yourself, just a convenience thing more than anything.

[NowthenJoe]

Very likely it is the power supply. One thing to also check on those e-machines are the motherboards. There were a lot of them that had faulty boards. You can tell if the board has issues by looking at the capacitors on the board. If they are rounded, bulging, or leaking electrolyte, it isn't worth fixing the machine. Hopefully that isn't the issue and a new power supply will get it going for you.

[DTro]

I just checked in to say it wasn't the power supply and I have a whole row of bulging capacitors.

We basically never used the PC since we bought it new. Quality item I guess.

[NowthenJoe]

Not the first e-machine to have that problem and certainly not the last.

I am sure the hard drive is fine if you need to access any data off of it.

You can actually replace the capacitors on board if you are really ambitious. I have done it more than once for customers when I was working in the shop. Usually it just wasn't worth the time or money.

[Nick Kuhn]

I just checked in to say it wasn't the power supply and I have a whole row of bulging capacitors.

We basically never used the PC since we bought it new. Quality item I guess.

Well eMachines is the cheapest of the cheap. Most major manufacturers use cheap electrolytic capacitors though. You need to build your own to get solid state capacitors. Electrolytic capacitors are generally the first item to go in most electronics.

[aanderud]

I just checked in to say it wasn't the power supply and I have a whole row of bulging capacitors.

We basically never used the PC since we bought it new. Quality item I guess.

[delcecchi]

Well eMachines is the cheapest of the cheap. Most major manufacturers use cheap electrolytic capacitors though. You need to build your own to get solid state capacitors. Electrolytic capacitors are generally the first item to go in most electronics.

What do you mean by a "solid state capacitor"? So far as I know, both tantalum and aluminum decoupling capacitors are electrolytic. I have never heard anything called a "solid state capacitor" so that is new to me.

We used to use tantalum caps for decoupling but I presume they have gotten expensive. Film caps, like polyester or mylar don't have enough capacitance.

[Whoaru99]

There was a big deal about bad capacitors some years back. It was a fairly widespread deal and many mfg. were affected. It's not really because they bought the cheapest capacitors, it's because there was a large batch of defective, mis-formulated, likely counterfeit capacitors that found their way into the supply chain.

With regard to "solid state" capacitors, they're sometimes call solid dielectric or polymer caps. Instead of using a liquid/paste type of dielectric they use a solid conductive polymer for the dielectric. They have been around since the mid-80s but only relatively popular for mid line and higher end consumer motherboards in the last 5-6 year. My Gigabyte mobo from 2007 has solid polymer caps.

[masoct3]

The best solution is to get rid of the eMachine and buy a name you can trust. You really get what you pay for with computers these days.

[Whoaru99]

Chances are those are power supply caps and they're probably standard through hole, not surface mount. So, you likely could replace them with some Panasonic caps from DigiKey for $10, give or take, including shipping...if you're into that sort of thing.

[aanderud]

The best solution is to get rid of the eMachine and buy a name you can trust. You really get what you pay for with computers these days.

Boy am I glad this isn't the case! Cheap computers have come a long way and have been for the most part rock solid for at least a decade. In fact, there're ALL cheap, relative to their cost 10 years ago (or heaven forbid 20 years back). Yet they all work most of the time. Yes, sometimes they fail -- but this is true regardless of brand. I can't tell you how many times I've done research on a particular model XYZ for someone who asked if it was a good buy or not, and regardless of brand they ALL have bad models and good models and sometimes the bad models cost more than the good ones.

I'm sitting here typing on a fairly-top-of-the-line Dell laptop right now, but my wife has a 6 year old Gateway laptop (which cost less than $400 at the time, a real bargain in 2006). My 6 year old Acer laptop ($400 when I bought it brand new) has been given to my father in law and is working great yet as well.

The same company owns e-machines, Gateway, and Acer.

[Moose]

good call 99 I fixed the mother board on my samsung tv for about 5 bucks worth the radio shack capacitors and a soldering iron not real hard to do if they are the pass through type.

[masoct3]

All I am saying is that generally speaking, you get what you pay for. Small hard drive, low memory, mediocre cpu. I have bought dell because of their premium parts. Never had a problem, both laptops and desktops. I'm just saying...

[Lowblazah]

All I am saying is that generally speaking, you get what you pay for. Small hard drive, low memory, mediocre cpu. I have bought dell because of their premium parts. Never had a problem, both laptops and desktops. I'm just saying...

I've got 100's of used dell optiplex's sitting in a warehouse right now unable to sell because 8 out of 10 of them have blown caps. Dell is by far the worst offender in the bad caps game. IBM seems to have the best reputation. We refurb thousands of pcs yearly and always get excited when IBM's come in. They rarely need caps...unlike the dells where its a 80% chance all the caps need to be replaced. Just my experience.

[delcecchi]

IBM not really in that business anymore. Sold to Lenovo. Good caps were too expensive and not enough people cared.

Although there is a story from the old days about terminals that smouldered. Smoke in the customer's office was considered a bad thing.

[Whoaru99]

As I mentioned earlier, many OEMs were victims of counterfeit caps, not intentionally buying the crappiest ones they could find well knowing they'd fail prematurely.

[Shack]

Amazingly enough Emachines have really been some of the most solid machines I have seen hold the test of time. From the aspect of time in service, abuse and neglect they are pretty solidly tossed together.

Lol I customized out (refurb-updated) one last year cause a client didn't want anything else than what they had but slightly updated. I toss up a pic some time of the beast after I was done.

IBM is still a playa. More software today but they still crank out product or stand behind what they slap their name on.

[delcecchi]

Yes. IBM still makes computers and very good ones. Just not PCs.

IBM's cap problem stemmed from putting tantalum decoupling caps in backwards by mistake on a few occasions. The caps don't like that, and sort of short out the 5 volt supply after a while, but not enough to trip the over current sensor. Enough to make smoke however, especially when the board starts to scorch as a result of the heat.

[Shack]

If I recall Emachines were guilty of poor air flow as some of them were very cramped.

Actually the emachines (2000-2001 era) did get more than I remembered but still was a budget re-build and cost less than even a new emachines:

delcecchi,

I know many covered Baby Blue but the Animals did the best redemption IMO LOL:

Good tune.

[Shack]

FYI that WinFast MoBo was a scroung locally online brand new for $5. Power supply upgrade $30 and $20 deluxe case fan and CPU upgrade. DVD player/burner upgrade $15. Misc around $15 and the Maxtor HD was full to the brim and this cause the brunt of the issue. Since they expanded already with externals I just recovered the data they wanted and gave it a fresh install of XP (they wanted XP) but all codecs needed to play their media. It basically a media server for them like Dtro was using but was able to gain new life out of old metal and paint it up like they want for under $200. Touch base with them now after yesterday and it being a year and its running great.

[delcecchi]

Dylan still canonical version.

[Shack]

Dylan wrote (assume he wrote Baby Blue) most all music from that period prior and some of the best songs and he did sing a few good tunes but man, I just have always had the hardest time listening with enthusiasm to Dylan himself. I have to listen to him signing it first and will right after this. : D

[delcecchi]

A song I find really moving is "Sara" from Desire. It is sort of sad.