Carol I do believe this is the way forward. I am now actively seeking a power supply. Thank you for your contribution John > John, > I just proved that idea wrong - that the power supply had to be good if the > fans are working. My fan within my power supply was running just fine, but > it was making a lot of noise and I was having all sorts of computer program > glitches because of the bad power supply - freezing up, not turning off even > with 'control/alt/delete', and then not being able to start Windows again at > all, and ended up reformatting three times within as many weeks. Finally, I > got scared that it really was a problem with the power supply and the whole > computer could catch fire because of it. So, I replaced the whole unit, fan > and all with a new power supply. Now all my problems are gone except the > one I've had since the computer was new, which is where it will suddenly > reboot itself for no apparent reason. Thankfully, it only does it > occasionally. > > Anyway, I get the feeling that a power supply can be bad in such a way that > it doesn't completely shut off all the power to the computer or the fan. > Maybe it's sort of like a 'short' in a house electrical system, in that it > only has split seconds when it's not working, and that's when it would be > that I'd have the freezing and inability to reboot etc. It would be as if > the Windows OS was almost totally destroyed because of it. It was scanning > itself for disk errors, telling me all sorts of things were missing, and > insisting on going into 'safe mode', but then not allowing me to go anywhere > from there etc. I spent hours trying to get booted up again, because I > didn't want to lose all my information, but to no avail - I had to reformat > each time. At least I know exactly how to do that now! :-) (And, how to > burn all my files onto CDs regularly, so I never have to lose much.) > Carol Hanson > > > > Tried that, Tony. No change. Still just the fans. CPU looked in fine > shape, > > but I've never seen a bad one. Same goes for the motherboard, AGP card and > > RAM. Quite a bit of dust around the fans. A little elsewhere. Do I have to > > bite the bullet and try a new processor - seems logical to try that > first - > > saves dismantling everything. > > > > Went into a computer shop today and the techie said, if the fans are > going, > > the power supply must be OK. My conclusion too. That's right, isn't it??? > > > > John O'Regan > > > > PCBUILD maintains hundreds of useful files for download > visit our download web page at: > http://freepctech.com/downloads.shtml PCBUILD maintains hundreds of useful files for download visit our download web page at: http://freepctech.com/downloads.shtml