Scrounging for computer spare parts - POWER SUPPLY NEEDED

Well, our computer tried to start this morning but then failed epically, all the lights went out and some siren alarm came on. John's pretty good at taking them apart and putting them back together - he even found a place inside that shows an error code and did some research on it at work, then tinkered with it for a couple hours when he got home - to no avail. Now we have to start trying to figure out what's wrong with it by process of elimination. For some reason he's pretty sure it's not a hard drive crash, and the first thing he wants to try is to replace the power supply.

We're not exactly rolling in extra money this week, and there's tons of important stuff we need to access on those hard drives. The first thing he wants to try is replacing the power supply.

Does anyone out there have a computer they've replaced or are keeping around for spare parts and would be willing to let go of a power supply? John can remove it from the rest of the unit if you don't know how. Help?

How many watts do you need? I doubt I have anything new enough to help, but I'll look. Let me know what the current watts is on the current one.

Also, have him check the heat sink and fan on the CPU. Systems will shut down to protect themselves from over heating. If the fan on the computer case or the CPU went bad, that could cause it to over heat.

Marsha,

I talked to Brian and though we have two old systems which could provide parts, he needs to know your specs to determine if they'd be compatible. I'm sending you his email via PM so you guys can talk directly.

Deb

Power supplies can be weird birds, and there are some manufacturers (like Compaq) who tend to use proprietary parts, whereas a hard disk is a relatively standard item regardless of manufacturer.

In case you haven't gotten this problem sorted out yet, it might be a better idea to try the hard disk in another PC if one is available, rather than change the power supply.

Failing that, maybe you can find somebody locally who might lend you a USB hard drive case that would allow you to move files to a different PC.

Reporting back in - It was the power supply! but the hard drive was already pretty old and on its last legs, and repeated re-bootings may have made it the end of the road. We need a new PC, but we'd been backing things up on another drive, so we only lost a couple weeks of temporary cache-type stuff.

So, anybody that I've taken naked pictures of in the last two weeks, we'll have to do them over. Sorry.

Whew! I can rest easy then.

No, Gayle - you have to come back for a photo re-shoot!

Hey Marsha, give Scott a shout at the Back Door he has a house full of parts.