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It's a Dell and is 5 years old. I've called a few places they say it is a powere supply issue (whatever that means) geeksquad said it would cost about 300 to fix. Should I just get a new computer?
Find a local computer shop if you want this computer worked on, you will get a much better deal than a big box salesman disguised as a PC Tech. They have sales quotas.
I had an old Shuttle XPC where the power supply was okay, the CMOS battery was okay but apparently one of the capacitors was weak. You press the ON switch but nothing seemed to happen - that is until 5 minutes later when it booted up.
Rather than spend extra cash fixing an old system, I decided that a 5 minute delay was acceptable - not all that much more than a normal Windows bootup time on an old system.
Other solution, although unlikely, is a loose connector wire to the power switch in front. If that aint hooked up, you got nothing telling the machine to turn on.
One otehr thing, unplug the cord from teh back of the box. Leave it unplugged for a while. When you plug it back in, listen carefully and look at the lights in the room if they are on the same circuit. Sometimes you get an idea of a bit of a power flow when you first hook up the PS (charging capacitors I guess).
Last is what everyone else has mentioned. The big "on/off" switch in the back. IF your machine has one (some PS's, especially ones on commercial units like HP and Dell, did not have that power switch for some reason...). I only say this last because someone else said it first. If you switch that sucker on and off and you don't hear anything charge up fast (like a camera flash), or if you smell something burnt in the PS (like an old hairdrier) then your PS is probably gone.
As for GS, I think they had a good idea, but found out how expensive it is to keep a staff of techies on call. Especially in a store not really known for its computers (mostly commercial audio/electronics). I would not be surprised if they turned the switch on and still charged you $300!!. Well maybe $100 (no parts needed!).
Either that or they do the garage special, replace everything whether it is needed or not and charge you for all of it! :O
Bumping this thread because I had a similar issue today:
My Dell desktop (7 years old) wouldn't turn on this morning. The blue light on the front of the tower was flashing so I pressed it quickly and it went steady blue. I then went to turn on the monitor and the monitor wouldn't turn on. The "going into power save" message would flash and it wouldn't turn on and the blue lit button would turn orange.
I tried several times and couldn't get it to work so I figured I would just turn the computer off completely and wait a while and then turn it all back on and let it reboot itself. I pushed the button on the front to try to turn it back on and it won't come back on I tried a bunch of times but it's not working
I undid everything --- unplugged everything, took out all cords, put everything back together and plugged it back in. It still didn't turn on There is a green light on the back of the tower which shows that there is power going to the tower but it just won't turn on.
Does anyone know what it could be? It's a Dell Inspiron 531 (7 years old). I have a laptop (that I'm using now) but I only want to use the laptop for my writing, etc. The desktop was for everything else and I have a ton of photos on there that I don't want to lose as well as some documents.
PS: I also called Geek Squad --- they want $280 just to look at it or $150 to "try" to get anything off the hard drive and onto an external hard drive. Sigh.
With the rep points you have you should know by now that it can take a while for an answer, definitely longer than 4 hours in many cases.
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There is a green light on the back of the tower which shows that there is power going to the tower but it just won't turn on. 
