I pulled out the PS, and used a jumper to check it, and it works great.
The fan comes on, and all voltages are correct at each outlet.

After reassemly, I have a green light on the MB, but nothing comes on, not even the fan of the PS,

Everything I can see looks good (fairly clean, very little dust).

I pulled the front cover, but haven't pulled the switch, because I should at least have the PS coming on, right?

The RAM looks good, I pulled it and cleaned it and re-installed,

Everything looks like it's plugged in securely.

I don't recall running into this issues before.

Should I pull the MB, and start checking components?

Is there a way to test further, without disassembly?

Just a project really, it's not my primary PC.

Thanks for any input.
Gary

 

Check the caps for pops.

 

All 35 caps look clean.
I pulled the plug where the PS goes to the MB, and all of the pin holders look good (not oversized).

I pulled the CPU, blew everything out, and reseated it, and still nothing.

Except the little green LED on the MB is still lighting up.

I check the On-Off push button switch, and it tested good.

Any other ideas?

If not, I may have to remove the MB and check the backside.

Would a loose jumper cause this type problem?

I'll check those as well.

 

Tried a different PS, same thing...........

Guess it's a bad MB.

I know they do fail sometimes.

Thanks for reading, and replying.

Gary

 

Tried a different PS, same thing...........

Guess it's a bad MB.

I know they do fail sometimes.

Thanks for reading, and replying.

Gary

The mother board died on my old emachine. It took out everything else when it died.

 

Make sure you have the switch connected into the right socket on the mobo. If you have it off by one pin it will not work. I highly doubt it is a bad motherboard.

If you're sure the main PC power switch (not the one on the PSU) is plugged in correctly. take out all your RAM except for one and try booting with just one stick. Make sure you check the manual for your motherboard to make sure you have the RAM in the right socket. Do the same test with all the other sticks (one at a time).

I recently had an issue somewhat similar to this, except my computer would start up but then immediately shut down just before or during the POST. It would go into a boot cycle. Turned out one of my sticks of RAM was bad internally, so no amount of cleaning would have fixed it.

Hope this helps!
Matt

 

I gave up.
Salvaged the HD, and I've started stripping it down.
I still don't see anythong wrong on the board.

It looks like there are 10000 parts, SMDs so small you can bearly see them.

I will use my heat gun on it tomorrow.

Thanks again for reading.

 

I gave up.
Salvaged the HD, and I've started stripping it down.
I still don't see anythong wrong on the board.

It looks like there are 10000 parts, SMDs so small you can bearly see them.

I will use my heat gun on it tomorrow.

Thanks again for reading.

Did you check to make sure the switch was plugged in to the board correctly? That seems like it would be the most obvious cause. Either that or the ATX connector is damaged or not fully connecting.

 

It must be an Emachine thing. Had the same problem, bought new power supply, unplugged and replugged all connectors, memory, nothing. Bought new computer, but left old one plugged in sitting on the bench. Every time I walked by I pushed the button, for weeks nothing. One day it just came on when the button was pushed! It still is working two years later.

 

On old Macs, failure to power-up can be due to a dead PRAM battery. Nobody mentioned it for this thing, so I suppose it doesn't have one? Some motherboards have reset buttons that might be worth a try. Could be too late for this thing.

 

On old Macs, failure to power-up can be due to a dead PRAM battery. Nobody mentioned it for this thing, so I suppose it doesn't have one? Some motherboards have reset buttons that might be worth a try. Could be too late for this thing.

I don't think eMachines are macs. They are PCs.

 

Haha, well of course, but my point was that a dead motherboard battery can prevent start-up and may be the number 1 cause in aged computers. That's not unique to Macs.

 

Haha, well of course, but my point was that a dead motherboard battery can prevent start-up and may be the number 1 cause in aged computers. That's not unique to Macs.

I suppose if you're referring to the BIOS battery, that's a good point. Though in my experience they tend to last pretty well. I got a computer that was quite old (>5 years) but the 2032 still had full charge.

Would be worth checking though, for sure. Good thought.

 

A dead Bios battery does not prevent the computer turning on, you just get an error message, and you have to re-set the system clock.

Anyway, on my way across town today, I picked up an HP someone had tossed, It had almost identical specs to the one I stripped down.

I used the ram from the E machine, and it shows up as something like 380-ish. (256 + 128). I am cleaning up the HD now, and I may re-install XP Home tomorrow. Both machines had COAs attached to them, and I think MS still supports XP thru April.

The HD from the non responsive E Machine is still working, so I'm good with that.

Thanks for your input.

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A dead Bios battery does not prevent the computer turning on

Actually it depends upon the make.

I did not offer this simply because I have not seen this behaviour in Emachines.

Some Dell machine become totally unresponsive if you do not reset the static ram after changes or repair. It can be a right nuisance to get these going again.

Your Emachines motherboard should have a reset jumper of some sort.
Alternatively you can try taking out the bios battery and leaving for some time (I have seen several days in some machines).

The motherboard will then be reset and restart.

 

Cool, good to know.

Thanks all,
Gary

 

Recalling the mention of RAM in this post, I had the opportunity to fix an ex family members laptop tonight. It had two sticks of RAM from different manufacturers. I removed the lowest denomination, and viola, it booted.

Before that, I could hear the HD trying to spin up, but then it shut down after a few seconds. The screen was black, and I didn't know what else to try, so I just took the RAM out, and put the larger stick back in by itself, and that worked. I wrote a note to the owner (who I probably won't see, when it's returned) about mixed RAM and possibly bad RAM.

I think I just high-jacked my own post...ha!

 

Recalling the mention of RAM in this post, I had the opportunity to fix an ex family members laptop tonight. It had two sticks of RAM from different manufacturers. I removed the lowest denomination, and viola, it booted.

Before that, I could hear the HD trying to spin up, but then it shut down after a few seconds. The screen was black, and I didn't know what else to try, so I just took the RAM out, and put the larger stick back in by itself, and that worked. I wrote a note to the owner (who I probably won't see, when it's returned) about mixed RAM and possibly bad RAM.

I think I just high-jacked my own post...ha!

That's exactly what happened to my desktop. The RAM was all made by the same manufacturer but I had one bad stick. That caused my computer to shut off immediately after turning on. I would put my bet on a bad stick rather than being mismatched, though I suppose either is possible.

 

Yes, I've seen that ram problem on more than one pc, but DerStrom already mentioned to take the sticks out and replace one by one in post 6 so I assumed you had done that.