I switched my computer on this afternoon, and nothing happened. No power, no noise whatsoever. I removed the plug from the back of the power supply, left if for five minutes and returned. Still no power to the motherboard or any of the components. I looked at the fans on the motherboard, and then saw that they moved slightly when I pressed the power button on (a couple of slow rotations), so obviously some power is getting to the motherboard. The light on the motherboard also blinks on for a very brief period.

The power supply is a generic 350w model, and the motherboard and components are slightly underpowered (but have worked flawlessly up until now). I am also using a 20 to 24 pin adapter between the power supply and the motherboard.

The motherboard is a DFI Infinity NF4 model and the Processor is an AMD Athlon 64. The power supply is considerably older than the hardware (but not ancient).

So, is this probelm one with the motherboard itself, or is the power supply at fault? Has anyody heard of a similar problem before? Could the PSU failing have damaged other hardware too? The supply has definately not exploded, I would have noticed.

Thanks, in advance for any help given. It is greatly appreciated.

Had that about a month ago at work, it was power supply problem (replacing it helped). Buy a new supply and don't torture your machine any longer with the small power "pulses" A word of warning: your machine may be going dead soon too, power supply may be the first warning. To continue the story, after replacing the power supply at work it worked for a few weeks very well and then one sad friday morning the motherboard was dead. Power supply worked flawlessly, but it wasn't that big a joy because the damn expensive machine itself was dead silent (disks got power, motherboard got [at least some] power, but BIOS didn't say hello, connectors dead, ...)

So shortly said: yes it's a power supply problem, I've seen enough of those symptoms. And if you have something valuable on the machine, now is a good time to buy some tapes or other media and do a major backup and test it well, just in case.

There is nothing really valuable on the machine, but the motherboard and processor are only 6 months old (got them in December). Surely they cannot be dead already. I am sitting nextto an old asrock motherboard which, as far as I am aware, is still alive, and thats about 5 years old! And it only cost me about £30, unlike the more expensive DFI model I have.

That's what I thought, the machine I told about was fairly new. No problems until then. The power supply was good too, and was "big" enough for the machine. And like I said, the machine worked flawlessly after the switch, no signs about dying..it just happens sometimes.

Of course it may well be that your board is ok and stays alive for the next ten years, but don't take any chances just warned you..and if it's only 6 months old or so, then you've a guarantee for that, right? No worries then.

I replaced a power supply and the replacement (cheap generic) lasted a couple of weeks and it quit. Bought a more expensive larger model and haven't had any problems since. (Being honest I paid more for the power supply than I did for the original case and ps combined.)

The board is guaranteed, but I have just plugged the power supply into another motherboard (the ancient asrock one) and it runs fine, all the fans work and the lights come on and everything. But it still doesn't seem to like the DFI motherboard!

There's no day that something funny wouldn't come along..

Get a proper new power supply for the mother board that you've got problems with. Large enough. And take the backups, will you? Just for my delight?

Dont worry. I have backups - roughly 6 DVD's worth, each made about 2 days ago. . I'll have to pop down to PC world during the week to pick up a new supply.

Also, what is the maximum capacity of a tape, and will the old (~1997) tape drives write to large capacity new tapes. I have an old drive kicking around that I could probably use for backups and stuff.

One possible way u can make sure it's power supply problem is removed unneccessary components and see. For example, in my case, i disabled my dvd writer and one sata disk when such kind of thing happened, I think, a year ago. Not much improvement. So, I took a risk and turned off my Big Typhoon Fan, not a good idea since it was the only one cooling my processor. Then, my comp started booting up and once I saw the login screen, I turned it off and got to a confirmation that it's power supply.
After that incident, I've switched to Acbel 400W power supply and no problem so far.

Yeah. I have tried removing every component except the motherboard and then switching on, but there is still no power. I should have a much more powerful supply, but when I was upgrading I was a bit tight on cash, so I thought I would do it later but never got round to it. I suppose a PSU isn't something you should skimp on .

Okay. I now am absolutely sure that the problem is the power supply. I tried a power supply from another computer in the house and it worked without a problem. Thanks for all the help given.

I have ordered a much more powerful supply (550w) which was reccomended for the motherboard. Thanks a lot for the help with this.