...Just tried that but there was little apparent difference. The CPU fan sort of herky-jerked, then started spinning slowly, then faster and faster until it reached normal speed and the system began to boot into windows. But it booted very, very slowly into windows, as if it did not have enough power. Maybe I should just buy a higher-powered power unit and try it. If it doesn't work, I imagine I can just return it. What's your thoughts? ...and thanks again so much for all your time...:notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy:

On a contemporary system I would say 350W is a minimum.

450 or more would be nice. I am not electrical enough to understand all the voltage issues but I have also noted that cheaper PSU's may not live up to their claimed wattage.

As a further test of the Wattage issue you could also disconnect your hard drive and just see if the CPU fan starts any better.

Is the CPU fan plugged into the motherboard or directly to the PSU?

If it is in the motherboard do you have a three pin or equivalent molex connector to run the fan directly from the PSU?

The CPU fan is connected by a three-pin connector off the motherboard. There does not appear to be a similar set of wires coming from the PSU to allow a direct connection to the CPU fan...

That would just be another "cheap" test you could run. Any computer or electronics store will have a 4 pin to three pin molex "Y" splitter.

If the fan behaves differently hard wired to the PSU then we could start suspecting some aspect of the motherboard for the root problem.

Ok, Jephree, I'll give that a whirl tomorrow, as well as trying a higher-power PSU. Beats spending $1k on a whole new PC...Again, I am so thankful for your time and knowledge. If there is such thing as Karma (and I hope there is for all our sake), you will be well looked-after! -- Bill

Goes around comes around ... :scatter:

That is about the sum of my physics and philosophy.

Let us know how it goes. :wave:

Well, it appears PSU was at fault (the power source unit, not Penn State University). I swapped out the old 300w unit with a new 400w unit (and it was on sale for just $30 at CompUSA, which, by the way, tested the 300 w PSU last night and said it was fine, that it was likely a bad motherboard and I might as well buy a new PC).

Everything is booting up like normal and my only problem now is that I pulled the wires out of the reboot/cold shutdown switch on the front of the tower and now I have to touch the two wires together to start up after a cold shut down. Should I just go buy a toggle switch from Radio Shack? I tried installing a "Momentary Pushbutton Switch" from Radio Shack (rated .5A at 125VAC) but it keeps shutting the computer down after a few seconds into the boot-up process. I could just keep touching the wires together but it looks sorta ugly hanging out of the tower like that. Any suggestions???

Thanks again for helping me clear this big hurdle -- and avoid spending $600-$700 on a new PC and then the hassel of re-installing all the old software!eace:

Glad things are going well.

It sounds like that switch is "sticking". As when you hold the button in for three seconds the computer is designed to shut down.

Is there no way to re-wire the original switch?

This page has some info on types of switches and what they can and cannot do:

http://www.directron.com/switchinfo.html