The ancient computer fails to power on.
The ancient computer fails to power on.
Hi! I'm not sure if the issue lies with the power supply, but I recently tried to turn on my old computer that still worked well a few years ago. When I pressed the power button today, only the front LED on the case blinked briefly and nothing else happened. After pressing it several times, the blinking stopped completely. Then I unplugged the power cable, reconnected it, and toggled the PSU's power button a couple of times, but the blinking never returned. Finally, after a few attempts, the blinking disappeared entirely.
I'm wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience and could help me figure out what's going on?
The PC is an Asus A7N8X with Athlon XP 2000+ and it hasn't been used in about five years.
Although the machine has been around for some time, its condition might have contributed to capacitor failures and connector corrosion. It would be wise to use a PSU tester and inspect the power supply after a thorough hardware check to identify any damaged capacitors or leaked batteries. Please note that if you're unfamiliar with the process, handling a power supply can be dangerous—touch it incorrectly and risk harm. If you're unsure, avoid dealing with it yourself. These systems typically lose value after several years, making professional evaluation both prudent and necessary.
First thing I'd believe broken is the CMOS BIOS info, because the battery drained.... mostly.
So you may want to pull that or go through some BIOS "clear CMOS" procedure, but with the risk that some of that info might not be constructed via some plug & play, because that was invented later.
Then I'd start pulling things, e.g. cards and disks etc. anything to simplify the system to the bare minimum and see if that behaves differently.
You may want to wiggle cables and connects just a tiny little bit, in case contacts aren't perfect.
Swapping parts with known-good replacements would be next, but if this is a singleton, that's hard to do.
But mostly you'd want to consider the value of anything in that system vs. your efforts: at one point or another it's best to let go.