A friend just called me and said he had a power outage in the middle of the night and now his PC won't power up. He said that the green indicator light on the left (looking at the tower from the front) is flashing and there is no other signs of life on the PC. He has tried to hold the power button in on the PC to see if the PC would power down and nothing happens. He also tried unplugging the power strip for an hour and turning it back on, and only the green light flashes on the front. What troubleshooting could he do to see what the problem is? My thought is that it might be the power supply. Funny thing is, his wife's PC is networked in the same room and her PC just booted up fine after the outage. Any insight would be great! Thanks Hopefully my advice will help you...Please post back with your results....thanks

Have your friend try to reset the BIOS. Maybe your friend could post his problem using his wife's PC.

by resetting the bios, do you mean removing the battery for awhile and then replacing it? My friend is really computer illiterate so he really doesn't know anything about how to post a problem. I'm just trying to save some steps from paying him a visit (which I will do when we can nail down a bit of the problem) so I'm trying to get some ideas together. Thanks Hopefully my advice will help you...Please post back with your results....thanks

Sometimes a PS will latch itself into a disabled state when it experiences a power spike or surge - the power must be dis-connected to the PS for a short time to unlatch that mode. If that doesn't help or he has already tried disconnecting the power to it, if his computer and everything connected to it is not protected from power surges and spikes, his power supply is probably fried. Even if it is protected, sometimes a power surge or spike will damage it, more likely if it is an el-cheapo model. The only way to confirm that for sure is to try the PS in another computer, or try a known good PS in his comnputer. Also see response 4 in this: http://www.computing.net/hardware/w...

Good luck.

Thanks for the replies, I'll see if I have a working PSU laying around and I'll try that. I kind've figured it might be that Thanks Hopefully my advice will help you...Please post back with your results....thanks

Smells like the PSU to me right now as well, as Tubesandwires has pointed out they could be sitting side by side and only one of them got hit hard enough to hurt it.... Keep the old stuff running