garp54

I don't have a question but couldn't find a place to post this....bear with me...it may help some...

I have a gateway and three emachines. I see all over the web a lot of problems. It seems to me that we all need to reexamine our troubleshooting skills. So here is my take.
You push the power button and get nothing, so you push again and again.
Sometimes it eventually powers up, in some cases it never does.
You push the power button and it routinely powers up, seemingly normally for 5 seconds or so and then dies.
So, you think MBR virus, bad power supply, and then give up the ghost and think, oh no, mobo.
Am I right?
Here's the deal, these things have a decent though very cheap ps and mobo, what they all have in common and is typically the first thing to fail, you guessed, the power switch. Here's what you do.
You have to take off the side panel, but not to get to the mobo, you just need to compress those lugs that hold the front panel in place. With the computer unplugged of course, pop off the front face, then pop out the power switch, just pull the plastic clips apart holding it, then clip the wires right at the power switch, carefully bare an inch of the wires, (I use a Bic lighter and then my finger nails).
Now do about two twists of those two wires.
Go ahead and reset the power strip or just plug in the computer to the wall socket, once you hear the fan spinning, count one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three and yank the wires apart. in every instance of a no start or a start and die emachines/gateway this is all it takes. If it runs fine, you need to acquire and solder in a new switch. They aren't available at Radio Shack, go on line and order a couple, cause, guess what, they don't last very long.
Having looked on line I've seen so many replacing the power supply and then the mother board, troubleshoot, I've got a number of them under my belt, that's why I took the time to post. Good Luck, gary

Terrister

Thanks for sharing this with us.