[Skinny]

Alright so I'm writing this for a friend who has this problem:

He moved his computer to a (temporary) location and didn't put connect it to a good power bar. There was a thunderstorm and a power outage and the next time he went to turn on the computer ... nothing happened.

I've taken a look at it and nothing happens when the power button is pressed (AC power is connected properly). No Lights, No Fan, nothing (like it's off).

I did a resistance check on the outside of the AC plug and got a large resistance for Line to Neutral. Inside I also did a resistance test on the Red to Ground and Yellow To Ground wires. Both yielded resistances of 31 ohms and 200 ohms (I think that's the order . . .if not they could be in reverse).

This is a 2 year old computer. And there isn't much dust in the casing. I tried the resistance testing on an old computer I had and I got roughly 63 ohms for red and 1k ohms for the yellow (again running off of memory so they could be reversed).

As for voltage. I removed the plugs from the drives and the CD burner and read 0V DC and 0V AC when trying to power up.

Also there is no LED turning on the mobo and the CPU doesn't spin.

So I'm wondering if my problem is a the PS or if there is a short down the line (mobo).

Thanks for the help.

[computeruler]

sounds like its the psu most likley but it could have took the motherboard and other things with it but for right now i would start with the psu

[Carbon]

I would definitely say the power supply at this point.

Generally speaking, if it was bad enough to trash any other components, it was bad enough to kill the PSU anyway (and at that point, it's often a total wipe minus peripherals, occasionally the HDD/CPU, etc), so you might as well swap in a new PSU and check it out.

Since it's so old, you might not want to buy a new one - I have about 3 PSUs lying around just from fixing other people's computers, and doubtless you can find tons at thrift stores (there were about 10 of them at a local one here, all heavy on +5V but fine for any modern PC). Definitely worth a shot for a few bucks.