Hey ... First off, I'd had problems with this computer for a while, finally (somehow) got it to boot into the Ultimate Boot CD, where I wiped the hard drives, and reinstalled Windows ... About a week ago, I'd noticed that when I turned it on, sometimes it wouldn't turn completely on. It would check the hard drive, and dvd drives, and then turn off again, and then I couldn't turn it back on without first unplugging the computer from the wall, hitting the power button again, then plugging it back in and turning it on... I'd have to repeat this process anywhere between 5 and 15 times to get it finally to turn on.

My girlfriend came home today and found that the computer had locked up, turned it off by holding the power switch down for ~5 seconds, then tried to turn it back on, and NOTHING happened. The power supply didn't even try to turn on. I pulled apart a spare computer I had lying around, switched the power supplies, and tried again, and still nothing happened. After that didn't work, I decided to try the old power supply in the spare computer, but it wouldn't work either ...

Am I dealing with dead power supplies here? Or just dead mobo/cpu?
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well, I was going to tell you to try another power supply, but you already did, that's too bad, because the next most likely cause now is a dead motherboard, I'm sad to say.

there are a few much less likely causes, ie, broken on/off switch, but I've never seen that happen myself, though it could.

But it sounds like a dead mobo.

Of course, make sure the old power supply is actually working before you give up, power supplies are by far the most likely to fail.

make sure the power supply has enough power to supply the system too, but I think you'd see lights or something even if it doesn't.

The fact that the old one doesn't work is a good sign.

My favorite cheap but good replacement power supplies are by thermaltake (check newegg.com for deals), 300 or 350 watt is usually fine for almost any system not using a super high end video card.
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Hmm... I kinda figured it would be going soon... My girlfriend said her stepdad had "messed" with the computers, to make them not work ... I don't know what he had done, and she's not computer literate at all, so she can't explain what he did either ...

And, about the power supplies ... Neither of them are working now, yet both of them worked last sunday morning and I haven't done anything to them since then.

Also ... I tried just bridging the connection between the pins for the power switch, to see if the switch itself was the problem, but again had no success in starting the computer.
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