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Today we had a power outage in my area. As a result my two computers lost power (yes I know I should get a UPS). One of them restarted fine and the other, a Shuttle XPC Model S141H, will not boot. When power is plugged in I can see a yellow and orange diodes come on through the grill but when pressing the power button nothing happens.

Ideas for getting this going again?

What should I look for if I open the case?

EDIT: There is no warranty left on this computer - thanks for the reminder though. I put it together from all new parts purchased about 2 years ago.

EDIT2: Here is a photo of the computer with the case off. When I plug in the power those 2 diodes are not illuminated. When I hit the power button the 2 diodes (I assume that they're diodes) light up but nothing else starts.

enter image description here

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    Yellow and orange blinking lights means your Power supply is dead. Time to replace it and hope nothing else if fried. Aug 7, 2013 at 1:31
  • 1
    @Spencer5051 - Why do you think there are lights blinking?
    – nerdwaller
    Aug 7, 2013 at 1:34
  • Can you link the Shuttle model you have? I may have some things to try, depending on which. (Update your question with a link, don't post it as a comment).
    – nerdwaller
    Aug 7, 2013 at 1:35
  • The diodes are not blinking. They are solid.
    – Guy
    Aug 7, 2013 at 4:29
  • Shuttle is an XPC Model S141H. No link but I've edited the post and included it.
    – Guy
    Aug 7, 2013 at 4:32

5 Answers 5

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Before you start swapping parts out to test, I would first try clearing the CMOS. It's possible the power outage corrupted some of the CMOS/BIOS settings. It should look like the following picture, or you can consult documentation on your Shuttle PC.

To reset it, find the jumper, which is normally close to the battery. It has three pins; the jumper will be on two of them. Move it over one so it is now covering the pin that was not covered to start. I like to pop the CMOS battery out just to make sure it resets. Wait 30 seconds, then put the jumper back the way you found it and pop the battery back in.

If it works, your PC will start. You should go in to your BIOS to confirm the settings. Most newer BIOSs will detect the proper settings automatically, but still ask you to go in and save/exit.

If you have a warranty on the PC, opening the case may void it. I would check with Shuttle on that.

If this doesn't work for you, then you have to start swapping out the power supply with a known good one to see if that's the problem. For example, you could try using the other computer's power supply, since you know it works.

At this point, I would suggest taking it in to be looked at, unless you really want to test it yourself.

CMOS reset

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    Try using the other computer's power supply if possible
    – DanHolli
    Jan 13, 2017 at 0:24
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Power Cycle

As was already suggested here, you should try a complete power cycle first. This is best done by unplugging the power cord, removing the button cell battery, pressing the power button once (nothing visible will happen), then wait 30 seconds. Finally, re-install the battery, plug in the cord, then try turning it on again.

Test with Another Unit

Second, try a known good power supply. Any power supply with the same 24-pin motherboard connector will do (technically ATX12V 2.0 or higher), even if it doesn't fit inside the computer (you can leave it temporarily next to it).

Buy the Correct Power Supply

If another power supply works, or you don't have one to test with, the next step would be purchasing a replacement power supply. Unlike many would lead you to believe, your Shuttle S141H doesn't require a Shuttle power supply. It's actually a Flex ATX form factor power supply, 300 watts, with 80 PLUS Standard efficiency.

Flex ATX power supply

For example, a good replacement would be Fortron FSP300-60LG-5K (Amazon.com), or a cheaper replacement without 80 PLUS efficiency would be Solid Gear SDGR-FLEX320 (Amazon.com).

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I have had this exact issue occur with Dell machine.

Solution 1:

a) Unplug the power cord for 10 minutes to let the PS loose any capacitive charge

b) Attempt to power on the computer

Solution 2:

a) Step a from solution 1

b) This time hold down the power button while plugging the cable back in.

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Were the PCs surge protected? If not, there could be damage to the power supply or the motherboard. The cause of the outage could have done the damage (e.g., a voltage spike) and the PC wasn't protected then something could have gone wrong.

As a warning, some of these actions may void warranty or potentially damage other equipment.  If you don't know what you're doing, ask someone who does.

My advice would be a top-down approach to trouble shooting. Start with the power supply. Check that power is going in (yes, if you're seeing things light up). If you want to risk it, open the box up, grab another PC and try to start the other PC with the suspect PSU. You should only need to swap the motherboard header across and have it on long enough for the BIOS to start beeping at you to tell you nothing is plugged in. The risk here is that if there is serious damage to the PSU, you could take down the good motherboard, but there are usually safeguards against this. If the known working PC doesn't kick into life, it's time for a new PSU.

After that, use a known good power supply and plug into your motherboard and try to start it up. Again, the BIOS post should beep at you saying nothing is plugged in, but that's OK. If you get life, then the mobo is OK, if not, the mobo is a goner.

They are the two major parts that handle switching and power distribution. It's going to be one of those two. In a much less likely scenario, the power button could be damaged.

As a rule of thumb, start at the source and work your way in. The number of times I've found something isn't working because it wasn't plugged in is astounding.

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The best solution in cases like this since your equipment has no more warranty, is one of two: If you don´t really know what you are doing, DON´T DO IT, this makes things worst, so take it to a technician, or to a friend who can test and repair for you. The worst thing is trying to fix things that aren´t really damaged. If you know what you are doing, let´s go:

The first thing is to open the computer and test essencial pieces, always being very careful with your equipment ( remember static electricity ).

01 - Begin by testing your power supply. If the power supply is faulty, the rest won´t work at all.

02 - If the power supply is good, you should test bios, motherboard and CPU. Make a bios reset, by taking out the battery and putting the jumper which control bios reset on the reset position, wait for about 30 seconds and then put it back.

03 - You could test the power supply in the other computer in order to see if it´s good, but beware ! If the power supply is faulty, it could damage your other computer, so, there´s a solution, that is locating the power supply wires which turns it on, so, you could turn on the power supply without a computer, and with a multimeter, testing the voltages. ( the contrary may work: If the power supply is not good, you could bring the other computer power supply and test on it ).

04 - The most precious thing: You could and should check if your data on HD is intact, by putting the hard disc on other computer and see if it works. It it works, you could use a software called Acronis True Image ( or similar ) and make an image of the whole disk just in case. With this image, you can transfer the content back to the HD or to a new HD ( if necessary, some power problems could cause HD failure, but many times we can retrieve the information ) without losing any data. This has helped me a lot. Even yesterday, I had a problem like yours that my windows 7 wouldn´t boot up, blue screen. I simply put the Acronis True Image disk on the drive, booted up by it, located the image file on an external hard disk and restored the whole partition in 10 minutes. So, in 10 minutes, my PC was back on business with no problem. I highy recommend creating images of your boot disks from time to time. HDs are very impredictable pieces.

Good luck

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