power supply?

[Renata]

So my desktop froze while trying to load a CIV autosave, and I had to hit the little black button of doom. After the computer shut down, when I tired to restart it, it just sort of whirred and clicked at me and didn't get very far. The first screen image would flash on, but then the screen would just go black again and the whirring would stop. Does this sound like I killed my power supply? If not, any ideas what the problem might be? Obviously I'm hoping I didn't just destroy the whole computer.

 

[warpus]

open er up, unplug everything except the essentials, and see if that boots.

if it does, start plugging things in (drives, cards) one by one.. you'll eventually find the offending piece of hardware.

If it doesn't boot up at all, then it's likely a ps or mobo issue

not sure if you wanna go through all that.. but that's what i would do - but i've done that sooo many times before.

 

[GoodGame]

If the power supply were really dead, you'd get nothing. No start up.

If you hear unusual whirring, and it never makes it to Windows or a BSOD, then I think the problem may be the hard drive failing critically. If you heard unusual whirring prior while you used it, I say that has to be it.

At any rate, turn the computer off about a 1/2 minute before restarting it, in case it's just freak RAM glitch.

So my desktop froze while trying to load a CIV autosave, and I had to hit the little black button of doom. After the computer shut down, when I tired to restart it, it just sort of whirred and clicked at me and didn't get very far. The first screen image would flash on, but then the screen would just go black again and the whirring would stop. Does this sound like I killed my power supply? If not, any ideas what the problem might be? Obviously I'm hoping I didn't just destroy the whole computer.

 

[Snovvdog]

If the power supply were really dead, you'd get nothing. No start up.

No, it might be a faulty psu nonetheless.

I used to have a Q-tec 650w ( rubbish) psu that apparantly on a review blows up nowhere near it's claimed output...

Anyways I bought a gfx card upgrade, I had an fx5500, I bought an 6600GT, my pc started rebooting randomly. Lived with it for awhile.
Later I upgraded my pentium 4 to a pentium D and my agp 6600GT 128mb into a pci-e 6800GS 256mb and my mainboard, my pc would reboot even before it got to the desktop...

Threw the psu away, bought a good branded 550w psu and problem was solved.


However I'd first try a different board and ram, as a psu that worked fine before and then breaks doesn't happen a lot ( unless it's a Hiper) or very old ( >5 years).

 

[Genocidicbunny]

It sounds like it could possibly also be a dead HD. After all, it seems like the pc at least tries to load bios and then something else goes wrong. My bets are on either a bad HD or a bad psu, maybe both.

Try unplugging the HD and then booting up. If there's no whirring, you've at the very least got a dead HD.