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Old June 9th 04, 04:22 AM
Jacques Clouseau
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In article ,
says...
Hi. I'm helping someone with a Compaq Presario 5320US desktop that
won't power on at all. The problem occured when the PC was moved from
one room to another. A previous tech told the owner to just go buy a
standard 350 watt power supply (which she did) and that he'd then
install it. This happened, apparently, without the tech even bothering
to do any actual troubleshooting -- plus, he was also apparently
ignorant of the fact that this Presario uses a non-standard proprietary
power supply. The owner can't get ahold of that guy now. So, the owner
says to me: can you fix it?

I can't even plug in the replacement standard power supply because the
motherboard has a 24-pin connector instead of the standard 20-pin.
Similarly, I can't use my quick-and-easy power supply tester because the
old power supply won't plug into that. I'd go ahead and start probing
with a DMM for proper voltages, but I'm under the impression that I'll
get nowhere with that if the power supply isn't already on and under
load. Finally, without a known good power supply, I can't even tell
whether the power supply was actually the problem, or whether it was
instead something else.

Any suggestions as to how to proceed? I did come across a web site that
sells 24-pin to 20-pin adapters, but does anyone know whether such
adapters even have a standard wiring pattern? Since the Compaq supply
is non-standard, how would I know whether the adapter would be wired
properly for it?

I found that the customer can buy an exact replacement part from the
HP/Compaq web site for $150, but doing so seems silly before we even
know where the problem lies.

Any help appreciated!

Jacques

Martik, Icee -- Thanks for the suggestions, which I'll consider. I do
know that there isn't a voltage switch on the back of the Compaq power
supply, so that's not it.

Jacques