Hi there,. I recently brought my computer to my families to do some work over the holidays...Basically whats going wrong is when I plug in my computer ( a HP a500n ), the power supply on the back blinks rapidly and there is a clicking sound if I lean close and listen. This has happened once before after a power outage. I brought it into best buy who for 24 bucks shipped it out to one of there repair stations to be looked at. Two weeks later I got it back they told me all it needed was a reseat of ram and what not and a cleaning and it fired up. Interesting....ive had it back for about two weeks now and its happening again. Ive tried reseating the stuff myself but it didnt happen. Im suspicious they didnt do anything and the long duration of shipping reset it somehow? Any ideas or suggestions?

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Hi there,. I recently brought my computer to my families to do some work over the holidays...Basically whats going wrong is when I plug in my computer ( a HP a500n ), the power supply on the back blinks rapidly and there is a clicking sound if I lean close and listen. This has happened once before after a power outage. I brought it into best buy who for 24 bucks shipped it out to one of there repair stations to be looked at. Two weeks later I got it back they told me all it needed was a reseat of ram and what not and a cleaning and it fired up. Interesting....ive had it back for about two weeks now and its happening again. Ive tried reseating the stuff myself but it didnt happen. Im suspicious they didnt do anything and the long duration of shipping reset it somehow? Any ideas or suggestions?

no power and a clicking sound... this sounds like your power supply itself might have gone kaput. if there was a ram problem this wouldn't stop the machine from powering on. it would power on and display a ram error when in post.

i would take it to a proper pc engineer yourself and get them to look at the power supply unit. if its not the psu it would look to me as the processor heatsink/fan. Fans can make a clicking sound when they get stuck.:)

Thank you =) I was hoping maybe it was something else considering it got "fixed" at some point before. Guess i'll toss in another and see how it goes. I appreciate the reply, very frustrating as its my primary PC. ONe thing ive always been crappy at, is once I install a power supply, I cant get the bastard comp to post.

thats ok. post back with any updates for me

Ok, Plugged in New Power Supply. It at least fires up. CPU Fan Engages, now I need to get it to post. Any quick ideas?

ok, that at least is a good sign. can you get into the systems BIOS? You now need to access the systems BIOS and check your boot priorities. unfortunately when you take a PSU out of a machine it will require a reinstall of the o/s so you need to ensure that the Boot priorities are set to boot from the cd drive first. this can only be done in the BIOS.

BTW, you wont see the POST screen if your monitor kicks in too late, its only there for a few seconds. you will also need to be hasty when entering the bios if this is the case. my suggestion here is to restart your machine and as soon as it restarts keep tapping away at whatever key denotes how you access the bios. its usually delete or f2 or f8 but each system can differ.

ACtually seems I was using wrong terms. Apparently, it turns on but for some reason wont boot up. The Orange light on the front just goes steady and it sits there doing nothing. Any ideas?

ACtually seems I was using wrong terms. Apparently, it turns on but for some reason wont boot up. The Orange light on the front just goes steady and it sits there doing nothing. Any ideas?

ok,when you say won't boot up do you mean that you cannot even access the BIOS or it just wont boot into windows?

if it wont boot into windows then it might be absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the psu. In saying this it could actually be the hard drive at fault.

I cant even get into the BIOS. The Orange Light at the front stays solid, But I hear no beep sounds. The Hard Drive simply isnt going . Not sure what it is. But the fans are all spinning so at least now it has power. Maybe its an underpowered PSU? Only 200 watts ( Only backup that I have ) And thanks so much for all this help.

Has Anybody found the repair on the dell [ 2300 ] aqnd 4300 ,,,,,powersupply issues..WHER THE heck all the real repair techs at ?????? . Thay all die off.......ITS not the mother boards or components pluged in...........ITS for sure in the supply.,,,,,,,,.Bad cap;s mosfet tran..coupler ..........Anyone find it out their.......I have severall of these supplys that are just dead...I have went thru a lot of components on the supply..resoldered the pc boards......Would save me the trouble of really going thru this supply and replaceing parts..i am a service tech at trade and found a lot of switch modes that have caps go bad ..easy crap thats replace able ,,,,,,If you know where to look......,,but time consuming ......email me back at n3phh@yhahoo.com.....I like to know any fixes that any real techs have com across....thansk --==de==-- Henry

usually a flickering PSU light means it's either overloaded (by hardware or just old)

or in a bad case scenario, is fried

Hey
I had a similar problem once.Sometimes it might seem its the power supply but in actual fact it isn't.also check to see if your power supply is giving enough power to the system(there might be lack of power)
re seating your processor and playing round with ram in different slots was never something bad.
It worked for me...Good luck

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(Henryhubcap -you got to relax with that smart attitude)

I am haveing the same problem with my hp pavillion a749c. It is deffinately a clicking sound in sync with the blinking light from the power supply in back. Unless there is an easy fix I am thinking it is worth just getting a new computer.

This thread is very old (Apr 22nd, 2008). If you have a problem, start your own thread and supply a lot more information about your computer, OS and problem.

So, I have had the same problem with my computer. To get the computer to start:

1: Unplug the PSU from the PSU itself
2: Unplug the 20/24 pin connector from the motherboard
3: Plug the PSU back in
4: While holding the power switch down reconnect the 20/24 pin connector.

I know this sounds crazy but in my case it worked. For me this was only a temporary fix but as long as you keep the computer plugged in you will not have this issue. It seems to only happen when the computer has been unplugged. If anyone has any better ideas please post...my computer will not start up at this point after doing that a few times.

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