So, I tried searching for pc hardware help, but apperently that community doesn’t exist, or I’m too dumb to find it. In either event, I am posting this here to try to troubleshoot my pc. This is mostly a hardware post. Technically the hard drives do have linux, but the issue isn’t with that I don’t think.

Ok, so here’s what happened. 12 year old computer, on all day every day for most of it’s life. Lets call it a 98% uptime. Well about 2 weeks ago I decided to turn it off, change hard drives, and turn it back on.

I have like 10 small hard drives. Each with different a OS on them.

So when I turn the PC back on, the fans sounded like the were struggling. The dell logo flickered on the screen, and then the whole PC powered off.

Thats weird. Never saw it do that before. So I hit power again, this time, a loud audible POP noise from inside the PC. Like an explosion. I could smell burning. So I rushed in unplugging everything, pull the PC out of it’s place, check for damage, but found no evidence of a fire.

So I removed the power supply. Then I started just removing the fans to clean them (been about a year), and then I removed the big heat sink fan over the processor. I don’t think I ever removed that before.

So my PC sat like that, unused, no way to turn it on. I posted when it first happened, to get an idea of what happened, and I’ve been told a capacitor probably burst.

I was also told that it’s possible the motherboard could have been blown out. I see no physical damage.

So Sunday I was at a thrift shop. I just happened to see a $10 power supply. My power supply was 300 watts. This one at the thrift shop was 220 watts. According to a calculator I found online, I use roughly 176 watts. So I figure I’m probably fine. Just as a precaution I didn’t connect my dvd burner. Just using it as a band-aid fix until I can get a better one.

So, first time powering up since my power supply died, with the temporary 220 watt power supply, and the dell logo shows up…and thats it.

Never gets past that screen. I googled it, and I’ve tried the following.

I took out the ram that was inside during the explosion. Luckily I still had my old ram in a drawer. So now instead of 16gb, I have 8gb. That did not solve the issue.

I took out the hard drive with ZorinOS that was in during the explosion. I put in a hard drive with BazziteOS. This did not solve the issue.

I took out all ram and all hard drives. I knew it wouldn’t boot, but I wanted to see what happened. No dell logo, totally blank screen. Power button was orange instead of white.

Put just the ram back in, no hard drive. I knew it wouldn’t boot. I thought I might get past the dell logo, and get the screen that says something like “No boot drive” or whatever it says normally when it has no hard drive. It did NOT do that. It still just stayed on the dell logo.

So from here, my thoughts are one of two issues.

Either 220 watts really isn’t enough, even as a temporary bandaid fix.

Or

Somehow the power supply exploding fried the bios?

Unrelated to all this, I don’t have internet at all at home right now. That’s a different unrelated issue that should be solved tomorrow, but in case it’s not, I might not reply fast.

I’ll post the computer model later. It’s an inspirion 3XXX something.

Is there anything else I should try to help gather more information? Any ideas to temporarily get this thing up and running?

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Edit: SUCSESS!!!

Ok, so two nights ago (the night I made this post) I went home, armed with the knowledge of everybody here giving me new advice. So I tried out all the advice at once.

First thing I did was took a picture with my cell phone of the motherboard, and how it looks before I do ANYTHING. This helps me know if I needed it, what it’s SUPPOSED TO look like.

Now, I disconnected the CMOS battery. Then I disconnected every single wire from the motherboard. After that, I took out both sticks of ram. After that, I plugged only the power cord, and the VGA monitor cord back in. Then I turned it on. Nothing. No Dell logo. No power. Nothing. I paniced. I thought I broke something. Then I realized that the power button is probably connected to the motherboard by one of those wires I disconnected from the motherboard. So I took a look and followed the power button to a wire, and followed the wire to the end. Then plugged that back in. Hit power, and this time the power button stayed orange, and I had a blank screen. No Dell logo. Just a black screen.

Then I remembered it did this the previous night when I had no ram. Now the point of disconnecting everything is that I wanted minimal power draw, since I was told one of the reasons I might be having issues is that 220Watts is maybe TOO big of a drop from 300Watts that this PC is used to…even though a power calculator told me I use 176Watts. I’m unclear if having ram uses extra power, or if a single 4GB stick uses more than a single 8GB stick. So I inserted one 4GB stick of ram, and turned it back on.

Now I get a Dell logo, and then…it changed! It said something like

"Keyboard not detected,

Operating system not detected,

CMOS Battery not detected,

Fans not detected"

That’s good! Even though I’d previously in previous nights turned the system on without some of those things connected at all, it never used to get past the Dell logo. Now, it got past the Dell logo, and was aware it was missing those things.

So then I reconnected all the wires except the fans. Put the Cmos Battery back in, and…it still wouldn’t boot. Just said “Fans not detected”.

So, power down, reconnect the fans, and…SUCSESS!!! Booted right up!

So I then powered down, connected all my accessories that draw from external power, and routed all my USB stuff through a powered hub I have. I figure I’d rather it draw power from an outlet connected to the hub, than the PC which would strain the power supply I have.

Then I swapped my old ram, single stick of 4GB, for 2 sticks of 8GB ram. So now I have my 16GB of ram again. And everything is running as good as you can expect it to, with minimal power consumption. I have not in any way reconnected the DVD drive. I haven’t reconnected a few of the non-powered external drives I have. I’m basically running this bare bones.

I’m not even running firefox the way I normally do. Usually I have 5 million tabs open, and task manager says I’m running at max capacity for ram, and I have to close a few tabs. Now I’m only running a few tabs.

I’m also only running the PC during times I’m using it. It’s strange turning off the PC just because I’m at work.

TLDR: I came here for help and you guys suggested a bunch of things, and I did them all at once, and it worked!

I’d like to thank everyone who responded and got my PC back up to almost normal state. I’m relieved to know that now I can confidently buy a power supply that will work with my machine! I was worried the motherboard was fried, and that I was going to buy a $40 power supply, only to find out my PC doesn’t work anyways. Now I know it DOES work, and a new power supply is all that it needs. Which is a much easier install than I thought. Unscrew 4 screws, unplug 3 cables, and remove the box (which is already done). Then to install the new one, just do those same 3 steps in reverse. That’s so EASY!

Again, thank you everyone! This Friday I’ll be getting some thermal paste and a new CMOS battery. You never realize just how crazy you go when the one thing in your apartment that you actually use daily breaks down. It was broken for almost 3 weeks. Now it’s at least functional. Thank you thank you thank you thank you!