NO POWER TO TOWER

[MP1975]

My girlfriend has a Dell tower, about 7 years old, she powered it off lastnight for the first time in a very long time.

Went to power it up this morning and nothing, no idiot lights on the front panel.

The outlet is good the power cord to the tower is good.

Any suggestions ?

Thanks in advance,
MP.

[joey3124]

try the power supply in a different computer or take it in to a local computer shop and they can tell u if its dead it could very well be the mother board to

[Salmon Trout]

try the power supply in a different computer

With a 7 year old Dell, swapping the PSU into another computer could well provide you with 2 dead computers. Many older Dells used non standard wiring of the (physically standard) connectors.

[MP1975]

Thanks both of you.

Is there a difinitive way to prove if its the power supply?

There is one green light lit on the mother board.

If I remove the ribbon cable from the power supply to the mother board and the light goes out does that tell me the power supply is good?

Thanks again,
MP.

[patio]

The LED only needs .5volt to light up...it's hardly a good indicator of PSU health.

Borrow a known good PSU of the same or greater wattage and swap it in there...

[Salmon Trout]

Borrow a known good PSU of the same or greater wattage and swap it in there...

Except it's a Dell... as I already said...

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=339053

[patio]

Sorry Salmon....i missed that.

Salmon is correct MP...

[Computer_Commando]

If you're lucky, the Dell in question uses a standard ATX PSU.  The proprietary power supplies were used primarily on the first Pentium 4's released.  You can determine this quite easily if it has 2 motherboard connectors: one 20-pin & one 6-pin.  Standard P4 ATX (ATX12V 1.x) use one 20-pin and one 4-pin.  Later ATX use one 24-pin and one 4-pin (or 6-pin, or 8-pin).

[TheShadow]

The power supply is a known weak spot in the Dell computers.
They save money by buying a PSU only big enough to get the computer out the door....so to speak.
It's a miracle that it lasted so long.
I replaced a blown PSU in a Dell XPS 400, less than a year old,  because the user just didn't want to deal with Dell any more.  This was his second RMA computer, from Dell.

I've replaced several PSU's in the Dell XPS series towers.  You can buy a PSU tester for about $19.95 over the net, but that's wasted money if the PSU is just plain bad.
Or, if you have a digital volt meter, you can test the various voltages at the plug to the motherboard, but you have to activate the PSU by grounding one of the wires to make the PSU start up.  I've owned a PSU tester for several years, so I've forgotten just which wire you have to ground.  Opppps!

If the PSU in the Dell was, say for instance, a 300W supply, replace it with at least a 450w supply, just to be safe.  Dell seriously overrates their supplies. 

Good Luck!
The Shadow

[Allan]

I've owned dozens of Dell's both for home and business and have NEVER had a power supply issue. Dell's are no more prone to problems with power supplies than any other brand.

[BC_Programmer]

If the PSU in the Dell was, say for instance, a 300W supply, replace it with at least a 450w supply, just to be safe.  Dell seriously overrates their supplies. 

Wait, what?

wouldn't a Dell 300W being equivalent to a 450W supply mean that either the 450W was overrated or the Dell supply was underrated?

I've owned dozens of Dell's both for home and business and have NEVER had a power supply issue. Dell's are no more prone to problems with power supplies than any other brand.

+1 from me as well. I packed my Dimension 4400 with nearly everything I could (maxed memory, 4 IDE devices, every slot full, 5500FX graphics card) and it still ran fine.

This was despite the power supply being "overrated" for 250Watts. maybe it's not a case of Dell supplies being  "overrated" but rather of their supplies being marked properly and many other PSU manufacturers fudging the numbers? I'm inclined to believe the latter.