Windows 7 PC suddenly powers off

[ef37a]

I know this sounds a bit 'untechnical' but have you tried giving it a slap?

The computer in my living room has had a fault for years whereby sometimes it does not start up and a bumping the case gets it going. It has been very good for a long time but just a week ago the DVD drive died. Got one from the PC repair shop down the frog for a score and it fixed that but, today, at 7am it started up but cut out 5 mins later. Pushed the button, running again, barely got Radio 3 on and, dead again. Gave it a slap and it has been running ever since.

Now, a year or so ago I decided to fix this and had it on the table running and pushed and pulled EVERYTHING. Could not make it go off. Put it all back and it was fine for a month then "Bing! Off again.
Thing is you see, if a "technically applied acceleration"is applied and either starts it up or causes it to fail you know you are looking for a bad connection or dry solder joint. FINDING same is whole other barrel of fish!

Dave.

[Drew Stephenson]

"Percussive maintenance" they used to call it...

[merlyn]

Unfortunately the fan didn't stay on long enough to run the test. It just cut off almost imediatley.

It sounds like you have the power supply plugged into the mains with nothing connected. When you plug it in like this the fan can briefly spin up. The power supply isn't on. To switch it on you need to short the 'on' pin to ground. You can look up a pinout for your exact connector to find out which one is the 'on' pin.

[Marbury]

Yes I did that by following a Youtube video with a bent paperclip, but it still didn't work. I reconnected the PSU back to the PC ad it won't power up at all now, not even the fan. Not sure what to do now as I still don't know for sure what the problem is.

[Marbury]

Just coming back to this problem. I think I will try the

Corsair CV450, CV Series, 80 PLUS Bronze Certified, 450 Watt Non-Modular Power Supply - Black

And if it isn't that, it can go back to Amazon. As it's a Win 7 pc it will be just as a backup - office admin type pc, not music. Just handy for use downstairs.

[FrankF]

Marbury,
you can install and run Live Mail on W10, according to this article: you just have to install Windows Essentials and a particular W10 update.

https://windowsreport.com/windows-live-mail-windows-10/

It also explains how to migrate your Live Mail data to Outlook should you wish to do so - not a bad idea if your old PC is on its last legs.

Also, I'm not quite sure why your "Works data" can't be migrated to Office (if that's what you're using on the newer machine).
Here's an article from Bill Gates about migrating from Works to Office 2010:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/off ... 64b5910f61

[Marbury]

The new PSU has arrived but my heart sank when I looked at the amount of complex wiring that needs to be configured. Where do you start ? Even worse, the new PSU doesn't even have colour coded cables like the old one. I could take a photo of it before I disassemble it but still not confident in getting the wiring through all the nooks and crannies. I would post a pic but for some strange reason there is no way of uploading images here.

[James Perrett]

The manual is a bit terse but it basically tells you the procedure that you need to follow. If you aren't familiar with how computers are put together then it would be best to make notes of what sort of connector goes where but it is usually fairly difficult to get things wrong provided you don't go forcing connectors in the wrong way round.

[ef37a]

Take lots of photos and notes before you unplug anything.

Dave.

[Marbury]

The trouble is that the existing psu has seperate plugs for the different cables. The new one has them all hard wired to the unit, which would mean a lot more work. If the new unit had seperate plugs I could have used the existing cables which would make it a lot easier so I will need one that can take the old cables.

[James Perrett]

I've never encountered a computer power supply that had connectors at the supply end although I've not installed a PSU recently. All the ones that I've installed have had captive cables.

[Marbury]

with some jiggery pokery I can work out how to do it but its just a pain not having separate plug sockets. Obviously the new one, although a higher power by 20 volts, must be cheaper built.

[merlyn]

The trouble is that the existing psu has seperate plugs for the different cables. The new one has them all hard wired to the unit, which would mean a lot more work. If the new unit had seperate plugs I could have used the existing cables which would make it a lot easier so I will need one that can take the old cables.

A PSU where you can take the cables out is called a modular PSU. That's what your old one is. The new one is non-modular. Given that the old PSU is not working, it would make sense to swap over the cables too. I wouldn't say it's a huge amount of work -- ten minutes?

[Marbury]

Ok, I will give it a go. Looking closer it isn’t as complex as initially thought. A lot of the wires that are tied to the cables are from the actual motherboard.

[Marbury]

Managed to fit it and attach the connections to the board where all the old ones were, as well as connect power to the hard drives and nothing. Press the power button and no response. Switch on psu is turned on so it must be a faulty psu as no other reason why it wont work.

[merlyn]

First thing to check is if the power switch is connected to the motherboard. There is a jumper on the motherboard where wires from the front of the case -- power, reset and power led connect to the motherboard. You may have taken the power switch connector off while re-wiring.

[Marbury]

Well I checked that and do you know what ? It was that very tiny connector that said "P Switch" that I plugged into (I guessed the red connector pins) and it has fired up all good so thanks so much everyone for your help with this long winded problem. As it's still Win 7 I will use it as a downstairs pc top do mainly admin, with some editing for music etc. Just nice to have the luxury of 2 pc's, especially as backup.

[merlyn]

It was that very tiny connector that said "P Switch" ...

It is indeed tiny. Well done finding the right pins on the jumper!

[Marbury]

I just deduced that red means power. It was a lucky guess.

The only thing I can't get to work is the TP Liknk wireless usb dongle. Pretty much plug and play on my new pc but this old one fails to detect it. Gone into all the hardware in devices and just can't see it. Came with a cd to install but this old pc doesn't have a cd drive (nicked it for the new pc) .

Any reason the usb won't see it, even though the ports are all working fine ?