At 07:41 PM 06/30/2002 -0500, Tom wrote:
 >I have a computer running Windows Me. It runs great. Everything seems to
 >be working fine. I can run it for hours, with no problems. As soon as I
 >restart the computer, though, it doesn't want to turn back on. I can't
 >even get it to post. If I wait for a while (a couple hours or so) it
 >will then turn back on. Any ideas? Tom

I went through a similar situation and it was the power supply.

When I'd go to power up the system, the machine would turn on for
about one second and then die completely. (Lights would flash,
drives would start to spin up...then nothing.) If I tried the
power switch again, nothing at all would happen.

I found that if I waited twenty minutes to a half hour and tried
the power switch again, the machine would usually start up fine.

I finally started leaving the machine on 24/7 and seemed to
have no problems. (I left it running for weeks at a time.) I did
power down a few times however and would have the same problem
starting up. Finally one day after powering down for some reason,
I couldn't get the machine to start at all (it would still start
for a second before dying, but wouldn't start after waiting
any length of time.).

I replaced the power supply with a new (and larger capacity)
supply and all is well. I power off every night and it hasn't
failed to start once in the two months that's passed since I
put in the new power supply.

The power supply that failed was a good quality (CalPC) 400
Watt ATX supply that had worked flawlessly for over three
years. I replaced it with an Enermax 550 Watt supply. (This
is a dual PIII machine with 7 hard drives.)

Regards,
Bill

                         PCBUILD's List Owners:
                      Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]>
                       Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]>