Gateway DX 4870-UR368
Intel i7
16 GB Ram
Windows 10....then 8
My nightmare started Friday as I was installing a (legit) audio production application from the discs that came in the package. Upon inserting the first disc, the disc appeared to be blank, but it actually wasn't. Upon ejecting the disc, I checked the label on the DVD drive and it said it was still reading the disc....eventhough I had ejected it.
So I tried to shut down, and my PC wouldn't even do so. So I had to turn it off via power button. Upon turning the PC back on, I got file system errors and had to restore the PC back to factory settings, which was Windows 8. Everything appeared to be fine (besides to having a fresh new bare bones downgrade from Windows 10 to Windows
until the next morning. I pressed the power button to turn on my computer, but it took five minutes before it actually powered up. Meaning: When I pressed the power button, everything actually powered up five minutes later.
Despite this happening (I power cycled a few times to test it), I chalked this up to the underpowered power supply acting up. (This PC only shipped with a 300w power supply, and I planned to replace it this month with a 500 or 700w before this happened).
I stupidly decided to try to upgrade to Windows 8.1, but that failed for some reason. So, regular Windows 8 was restored and I tried to log in but I couldn't. I entered my password but the circle dots thingy just kept spinning for 30 minutes until I turned it off via power button.
When I tried to turn it back on, it wouldn't boot up at all. I waited 15 minutes or so. But it wouldn't turn off by pressing the power button so I had to unplug it. I pressed the power button once more to turn it back on. However, this time the Power LED wouldn't even come on. I can hear the fans going and everything. Hard drives (plural) spinning up and everything. But nothing happens.
I tried a different power supply from a working computer (which is what I'm posting from) and got the same result. I checked the motherboard for a light, however this mobo has no light bulb on it. There's not even a space for it.
The ONLY issue I've had with the computer was a very rare one. Once every 8-10 months, it would turn off at a random time. I've had this computer since November 2012 so it's only happened a handful of times. This was most definitely the power supply being underpowered.
This has totally taken me by surprise as the Gateway computer has shown no signs of any issues before this, besides the power supply being underpowered and turned off on extremely rare occasions.
Do you think the mobo has died somehow?
I'm up for trying to save this computer because it did it's job very well. I loved it and it could load a lot intensive audio production programs and plugins and it'd only take up about 30% of the CPU usage meter.
