Hi,
A friend of mine experienced an intermittent mains power problem recently. They have an Evesham Platinum S Plus PC . When the PC is turned on the front power and hard-disk lights at the front of the unit stay on constantly but the system does not boot. The hard drive is OK as I piggy-backed it to another PC to copy off the data as an emergency backup.
I thought it might be either the motherboard or the power supply. This is what I have noticed:

1). All three fans (1 front, 1 back in power supply and 1 on the CPU) spin. There is no power surging that I can detect.
2). Ethernet link and activity light work seem to work when connected to broadband
3). There is no video signal coming from the video port.
4). There is no power light to the inbuilt DVD ROM and CD-RW drives and neither will eject or open their trays however if I remove the IDE cables they power up as does the hard-drive.
5). There are no diagnostic beeps when powering up.
6). When the system is powered on you cannot turn it off using the front power-button. The only way to turn it off is with the the rear switch that is on the power supply.
7). I removed the CMOS battery and let the system drain and on one occasion it sounded like it might start but didn't. That time I could power of the unit from the front button but this has only happened once.

Is the power supply at fault as opposed to the motherboard or vice versa?


Many thanks in anticipation and what a excellent resource of information this site is.

Hey there and welcome to PC Help Forum.

Difficult one to tie down. Can you move the PSU to another PC and test it?

Hi Hengis,
Thanks for your help. Unfortunately I do not have access to another base unit I can try things out on.

Hi, I have the same problem on a Emachine model: T2615 I tried a new power supply, but the problem continue, everything lights up, but no boot. Another forum said to check for blown capacitords on the board, I looked at them but all seem good.

That's a dead motherboard you got there Victor

I am sort of going through the same problem. And I've tried a new power supply because my old one gets hot if I leave it on. But pc still will not boot up. I'm thinking motherboard or cpu?? I get no post beeps, no video, no bios screens nothing. When my pc shut down it was because the cpu fan crapped out!