Campquake Senate

My e-machines gaming pc has died, I think. On power up, the
power light flickers on and off for about 10 seconds, while
the CPU fan starts and stops, it reminds me of a relay
stuck in an on/off cycle. Then it powers down for about 10
seconds, and then starts the whole cycle over. After about
1 hour of this, it completely stopped, the power button does
nothing. What should I do?
(I can't build my own, don't have the skills)

I was gonna vote "buy a Dell", LoL!

Sounds like power supply to me. Not hard to swap out a new one, and not expensive, so finding out that wasn't the problem shouldn't set you back too much.

borrow a power supply temporarilly from a PC that still works and verify whether or not that is the problem.
That would be my first diagnostic check.
If it still doesn't work... I'd guess that it's probably motherboard related.
Could be CPU, but more likely mobo.

I initially wanted to tried this, but the there seem to be 2 different sets of
wires going from the power supply to the motherboard on the emachines.
One has about 20 wires and seems to be standard, the other has only 4 wires and goes to another connecter on the motherboard. My replacement
power supply does not have this 4-wire connecter. But I have a few other
old cases whose power supplies I can check.

An ATX12V power supply has the newer 4 pin additional power connector. This supplies the CPU with more power. This connector is required.

I guessed that the problem was motherboard related. Not knowing the age of the CPU or RAM, I would guess that you're going to do an entire swap of the motherboard, CPU, & RAM.

When power supplies fail, it's usually in the entirety. No power. But sometimes you can find a certain power rail would fail and drives won't spin up or odd things like that. The way to test that is to disconnect everything from the power supply leaving only the motherboard's power wires. And remove all non-essential add-on cards from the motherboard, such as sound cards or SCSI cards. Basically, trying to minimize the power load when you turn the computer on. You should be able to boot to the BIOS screen at least.

All the talk of power supplies made me realize I could try it on another pc,
where the 4 wire adapter is not even required. That was successful,
which meant the ps was OK and the problem was in the motherboard.
So I called emachines and found out they don't even manufacture this
board anymore, and there is no upgrade. So I got another emachines
pc, this one with an AMD processor and geforce 6100 onboard.
Zoddy is getting it configured now, and TreeWhaleNotFish christened
it CookieMonster.

By now I have figured out how to do this right, which is to take the
WLO along and buy her a washing machine that is 3x the price of
the PC. Everybody goes home happy

Thanks guys for the diagnostics help, excellent advice as always.

LOL!

Washing machine. I'm going to be laughing at that one all weekend.

Dataspel wrote:
By now I have figured out how to do this right, which is to take the
WLO along and buy her a washing machine that is 3x the price of
the PC. Everybody goes home happy

Thanks guys for the diagnostics help, excellent advice as always.

dammmmm... The price of gaming!!!!!!!!!!!!

you gotta be careful with that one though, some will take it as a male chauvinistic gesture...

Listen woman - just get in there and wash my skibbies!

What?! A washer machine 3X the cost of a PC?! Does it sort the laundry for you, pre-mix the soap from a dispenser, calculate the optimum water temperature for your wash? That must be an awesome machine. Probably the kind that doesn't eat little holes in your clothes. Probably the kind that I need!

Glad to hear that you're getting up and running again. Good luck with the new rig.

Just out of curiosity, on the old motherboard, does the capacitors around the CPU look like their bulging or cracked open? The capacitors look like little soda cans. And like soda cans, they should be flat on the top with no signs of leaking or bulging.

2 of the bigger capacitors have buldgey tops. The sides look fine. The
amount of buldge on the tops is about 1mm, you would not
notice it unless you looked for it, but they definitely look different.
I have some photos, will upload them once I figure out where
and how - I tried campquake fileage but don't have the ftp
login user/password.
What do you think the capacitor buldge means?

Also, what I am really concerned about, I put the old hard disk
on the new machine as a slave, and it is detected, but WinXP
reports that it is completed unformatted. Are the files lost
forever, or do you think something can be salvaged?

Well, it was a cheap PC and I exaggerated the multiple.
After all he PC rebates, it comes to 2.6x. It was not so much
the washing machine in itself, it could be anything that
she perceives as building the nest, IMHO.

KrAzYdAvE wrote:you gotta be careful with that one though, some will take it as a male chauvinistic gesture...

Listen woman - just get in there and wash my skibbies!

Three men were sitting together bragging about how they had set their
new wives straight on their duties.

The first man had married a woman from Pennsylvania. And bragged that
he had told his wife she was going to do all the dishes and house cleaning
that needed done at their house. He said that it took a couple days but on
the third day he came home to a clean house and the dishes were all
washed and put away.

The second man had married a woman from West Virginia. He bragged
that he had given his wife orders that she was to do all the cleaning,
dishes, and cooking. He told them that the first day he didn't see any
results, but the next day it was better. By the third day, his house was
clean, the dishes was done, and he had a huge dinner on the table.


The third man had married a Texas girl. He boasted that he told her his
house was to be cleaned, dishes washed, the cooking done and laundry
washed. And this was all her responsibility. He said the first day he didn't
see anything and the second day he didn't see anything but by the third
day some of the swelling had gone down so he could see a little out of his
left eye!

The motherboard is fried. The bulged capacitors are your indication, I see them on the Optiplex 270 often.

You forgot the option in your poll:
You bought an e-machine? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA{gasp}HAHAHAHAHAH

Just out of mere curiousity... Do you have the ability to post a few pictures of the insides of your computer case? Digital camera?

Hm, the obvious solution is missing in the list: buy a Mac! That makes all the other points non-issues ....