My computer turned off and it won't come back on.

[Brashley]

I bought a second hand custom PC back in 2016 for gaming. The guy said it was plug and play, but my husband spent hours trying to get it to work. Anyway, the past year or so it's been giving me some issues. Mainly rebooting itself without prompt or just shutting down. It must have turned itself off sometime yesterday because I went to use it today and it was off. I pressed the power button (sometimes when I press the button to turn it on, the light comes on, then it goes out and I have to press the power button, again, and it will boot up) and it won't turn on. The light will blink once when I push it. I push it again and the light blinks. Then I push it again and nothing. No light blink, zero, nada. Not sure what the issue is. Hopefully its cheap to fix. I don't have specs on hand...because the computer won't turn on. Thanks for the help!

[rproffitt]

I understand the frustration of a dead PC but without make, model or if some built machine of parts all advice is generic and never can be spot on.

For example the symptom can be bad PSU (power supply unit), motherboard, cards or an assembly error. The symptom does not tell us which area it is.

So you may ask how does a tech know what to do?

In short this is called The Dead PC. The tech takes it to the bench and verifies the symptom. Now what happens next can vary with the tech and their inspection of the PC. Here's a few scenarios.

1. The PC is inspected and the tech finds scorch marks on a board. This means there was a catastrophic failure and the estimate usually entails a new motherboard, RAM, CPU, PSU and all the cards. That estimate is just that. Some boards and components may survive but due to consumer laws your estimate can not be exceeded if the owner accepts it and repairs begin.
2. PC parts look fine. At this stage the estimate is still as bad as #1 and depending on shop policy some diagnostic work is done such as downsizing the machine. This entails unplugging cards and drives to see if you can get a power up. If the PC won't power up with all the cards and drives unplugged it's what is left that is suspect. An estimate may be given at this time with a caveat that the other parts were not tested and may be faulty. WHAT? This issue happens as some bring in PCs that were hit with lightning strikes so you can't know without testing parts if they are good. Consumers rarely pay for this testing prior to repair.
3. So here we have a machine that won't power up with all it's cards and drives out. You try it with a bench PSU and if that works install a new PSU.
4. You try it with the bench PSU and still no power up. This is usually a faulty motherboard or one of my favorites, faulty assemble. That is someone put an extra motherboard mounting post and it finally shorted out. For this one the motherboard, PSU get pulled out onto cardboard and a test power up done there.

I hope this gives you insight on working The Dead PC. You can find more ideas on this by googling The Dead PC.

[manxann]

I have an old Acer Veriton with part of your problem.
As with yours, switching on power at the outlet gives a short flash of the HDD LED. Press the power button again and it then boots!
However, if the main power is interrupted when running, it will not boot.
If I disconnect mains power, hold down the power button for 15 to 30 seconds and then plug in the power, normal service (for this PC) is resumed!
Worth trying?
Cheers