PSU dead???

[Dim]

I am having some ugly problems... I just popped a Cold Cathode Light in, and fired it up, and everything seemed peachy, until I decided to flip the toggle swith that came with the kit, and the whole system (as opposed to just the light) died. I unhooked it and tried powering up again, but couldn't get it to work... So after trying for a while, I put a diff PSU into the system, and once again it fired up just fine.

The only similar instance I can think of is one time a long time ago I unplugged a molex (while the power was on) from a CD Rom and the PSU stopped working (never did that again).

My friend told me that one time he plugged a molex into a cdrom while his PC was on, and it arced. He couldn't power up, and thought it was dead, but a week later (he hadn't touched it) he pushed the power, and it was completely normal!!

Well if anyone has any advice, I would appreciate it:eek:

[looktall]

sometimes a psu will have a mild heart attack and simply refuse to work, but give a bit of a rest and some time to recover and it'll be back to normal in no time.

and sometimes they have fatal heart attacks. :p

which one yours had can be tested by hooking it up and turning it on.

i once gave my aopen psu a mild heart attack and it refused to power up, in the time it took me to remove it and put another in it's place, it had recovered and was working again. (i tested it before i salvaged it).

plug it into the mobo and power it up, you might get lucky.
it may even be a blown fuse. in some psu's they're easily replaced, sometimes they're not.

if the psu really is totally dead, salvage what you can out of it.
i like to get the fan and fan screws/grill, any little heatsinks inside (some of them can be good for making ramsinks) and as much of the wires as possible. (excellent for making fanbuses or extending fan wires).

[LiGhTBoY]

Here goes the old trick : take a light bulb, connect 2 wires to it and connect them to the AC side of your PSU (will it is unhooked of course ;) ). Leave it there for a couple of minutes, go take a long nap and then connect it and it >should< fire up.

Most PSUs have "safety features" built in, and yours might saw the cathode as a short circuit and stopped working to protect the rest of the hardware.