How to Troubleshoot a Computer That Won't Start

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Charles Stewart, Jr. and I'm going to show you how to troubleshoot a computer that won't start. I know this sounds really kind of stupid sometimes, but you want to make sure that the computer is plugged in or may that the power strip the computer is plugged into is turned on. Because believe it or not that tends to be the to fix a problem most of the time. So if you're hitting the power button on the computer, and it's not turning on. Go over and you know that somehow that the outlet didn't get you know the cord didn't get pulled out of the outlet. Or maybe the power strip someone accidentally you know or it might of flipped the breaker in the power strip so you might need to turn it back on. That's usually I'd say most of the time will fix your problem. Also you know if you've done that you might want to check if someone's flipped a switch in the house that that outlet might be on, which you probably don't want to have a computer on that outlet if that's the case. Or go check the breaker and make sure that no breakers have been flipped, that that outlet could have been on. And if you've done all that and it's still not booting up or turning on, then it's probably the computer, and in that case you're most likely running into either your power supply has died. Or the motherboard itself is shorted out and not working anymore. Because at the very least if your power supply is working, it should boot up. If one of those two are working it should at least boot up and if it's the hard drive you'd get an error. So the best thing to do if you are savvy enough, go buy a new hard drive or take it down to Best Buy to their geek squad and bring your computer in and have them swap out the power supply. Probably the first thing I would do, and then see if that solves your problem. If your computer cranks right back up then you know it's a power supply, and usually they'll die eventually. That's just one of the things that will happen over time, your power supply will die. Hopefully your computer will be around long before it does decide to go out. The next thing would be the motherboard. Now if that happens, you might as well go ahead and get a new computer. Because that's kind of the back bone of the computer, is your motherboard. So if something's gone wrong with that then you'd have to swap that out. Which could be if you built the computer a fifty dollar or a one hundred dollar part, but if you have a manufacturer computer like a Dell or a HP, that's not a good thing. Granted if you are still under warranty you want to make sure you haven't void the warranty by opening the case or anything. Send it back and have them replace that for you. Again the geek squad over at Best Buy they'd probably be able to tell those questions, and help you out with that most of all. And that's pretty much it for troubleshooting a computer that's not starting up."