Computer Guru

Ok one of my machines........a Dell Optiplex GX280....... quit abruptly yesterday......twice. It did the same thing once this morning.
It is attached to a Back-ups and that did not fluctuate.

Computer was refurbished when I bought it about 8 years ago. Still running Windows XP but that has nothing to do with this.
Is my power supply dying ?

Could be, other possibilities is motherboard or it's overheating. The latter is easy to figure out. Power supply would be easy to replace.

Did you clean out any dust ?

I have an identical machine that has a crashed HDD. I can pull the power supply out of that and swap it.

I assume it will just quit completely eventually if it is the power supply ?????

How could it be dusty ??

I would swap the power supply with the one from the other machine, clean a bit while you are in there , just no using the vacuum

take it out side and blow it out with compressed air

Change the power supply and swap our you fan for a larger one. Maybe you machine is old and dying. Many don’t last that long. Your OS is obsolete as well, I am guessing.

White, you ever opened the case on an 8 year old computer? That little fan draws in lots of dust and causes problems eventually.

Yes. But if power supply is faulty, it could fry other components.

Thanks guys.

Yes I've been inside this machine several times. The hardware is too old to upgrade to a newer OS so I'll keep this one limping along until it quits completely.

I only use it for one thing and have a couple of back up options.

Did you try unplugging it and plugging it back in again?

Hit it with a hammer repeatedly. It'll never give you any more problems.

Wise guys

I've not had anything but lap tops the last several years. Most of my electric power problems including towers has been in the power buttons. I lost a couple mother boards but seems when then go they go. If I remember right cooling a mother board off to quickly after you quit, like with an extra fan is what pops them.

Just because a system is outdated is no reason to pitch the computer, you can put a Linux Mint 19 in it or on it with another hard drive or flash drive and get some more years out of it. Used to be getting other stuff like wifi or printers to work was a head ache but not so much any more. The cost to do so is very little. The older computers are 32 bit and and won't work with a 64 bit system. A 32 bit will work on 32 and 64 bit, its just not as fast. Mint still comes in both but they are quitting the 32's on this distro.

Invest in a liquid cooled Computer

I doubt whites computer usage would necessitate a liquid system.

Running Mint 19 on an older Dell now and am getting ready to upgrade to the new Mint 20. I have no plans to switch back to windows

I used To run Linux years ago but it was tough to set up media players is the mint disto incorporating media players.

70sdiver, yeah mint has a software manager and VLC multimedia player is the most popular and you just hit install. Or you can do it the hard way: https://linuxhint.com/install_vlc_media_play_linuxmint/

PCs plagued by bad capacitors - CNET
[Search domain www.cnet.com/news/pcs-plagued-by-bad-capacitors/] https://www.cnet.com/news/pcs-plagued-by-bad-capacitors/
Members of Dell's Community Forum pages also spotted a bad capacitor problem with Optiplex machines in February 2005. The faulty machines caused "intermittent shutdown, thermal shutdown, and video ...

That's one of the reasons I don't switch to Linux. The only thing I run on the computer in question is designed to run on windows and is resident on my hard drive. No browser is involved. It WILL run on Linux but is difficult to install and configure.

This old machine is at its limit on memory etc. I'll just keep it going until it dies. Need to upgrade to SSD anyway.

I can highly recommend cheap chromebook laptops. I have a refurbished Dell that I paid like $125 for, it does everything the most expensive computers do but its basically immune to any viruses or things like that. Nothing is stored on the computer so if it dies you get another one and log into your account and you're back up and running. Its like 8 seconds on start up too. Very happy with them, seem to last about 3-5 years for me.

As old as he is , he's nothing but dust !

Cotton hands white a bigger hammer

I'm so old I shower with a can of compressed air !!