is my power supply broken?

rein

Hey people,

An hour or so ago, i was working on my computer when suddenly the power all over the house swithed off. I rebooted, and my bios seemed to find my hard drive and my disk drives like it should. I got as far as the window logon screen when the electricity swithed itself off again.
Clearly i have a short circuit somewhere, but how do i know if it's my power supply that is broken? It could be -for instance- my motherboard too.

your suggestions are appreciated.
rein.

SainT

There are 2 options to check:

I. The easy one: borrow a PS from your buddy and test your rig.

II. The hard one: ... ... bleh.. just borrow that PS from your friend Razz

Anyway, if everything works fine, then it's somehting in the PS (search for the fuse and replace it ???).
Or you can buy a new one.. a better PS, if you have the cha$-ching$ :/

Bones

It sounds like the power supply. What happens when they get older is the capacitors can't keep up with the demand. When the demand for more power goes up (like during startup because of the heavy drive activity) the power levels in the p/s actually drop because the capacitors can't keep up with the demand. When the power level drops, the pc restarts.

Although without proper testing equipment, the only real way to find out for sure is to start replacing components.