I cleaned my PC and upon startup, it powers down unexpectedly.
I cleaned my PC and upon startup, it powers down unexpectedly.
Hello everyone, I'll be brief. Today I cleaned my PC from dust using a hair dryer at a medium temperature. As I usually do every few months, after turning it on, I press the power button to verify everything works. Everything seems fine until the beep indicates it's ready. The PC shuts off and restarts repeatedly. Sometimes it beeps but then powers down again. The shutdown occurs right when the CPU fan begins increasing speed to start up, then stops and repeats. My PSU is an older Greek model that has been over eight years, so I suspect it might not have enough power left. I've tried everything—replacing RAM, removing the GPU, powering down without the GPU, draining the CMOS battery, etc. I haven't touched the CPU during cleaning, so I won't try that either. The main question is: what did the hair dryer do to cause this behavior? What do you think? Thanks! Edit: just rechecked the machine and got a POST but it shut down.
It seems your PSU struggles under increased load, like fans spinning faster when the CPU uses more power. I’d recommend swapping it out as the first step. Don’t attempt to restart it with the current unit again—better to replace it entirely. In the worst scenario, it could fail completely and bring other parts along.
But everything functioned smoothly over the last few days until just ten minutes before the cleanup. When I switched on the blow dryer for cleanup, it damaged the PSU. It wasn’t because I was using a vacuum cleaner—it caused a short circuit on the board. I’m trying to understand what happened. I’ve been considering replacing it for about two to three years, but I’m unsure why that plan didn’t work and why I didn’t opt for a new PSU sooner. I recently purchased an old Windows XP PSU to sell, but I’m not sure if testing it on my current machine is wise. The original had less than 500 watts, while the new one is 400 watts. My current setup uses an i5 with an 750W processor and a 1050Ti CPU, so it should be fine for testing. Should I proceed? Update: I checked the other PSU, and it shut down completely. It won’t let me enter Windows or show any output because it’s too old—no PCI-E or SATA cables. For now, I’ll leave it running briefly to see if the problem persists. It seems the issue has been resolved.