Problem maybe with Motherboard.?

My friend has an EMachine T1742 with Imperial Motherboard MBEM2095IMPL, 1.7GHz Celeron. 128 Ram, AtI Radeon Video, 40 Gig Hard drive.
when you turn on the computer, it boots up okay.. then within a couple minutes of getting to the desktop, it shuts off.. the fan is still running on the power supply and the light on the front is flickering, but that's it. You can't push the button to completely turn it off.. You have to unplug it. But when you plug it back up, it won't start. You have to let it sit for about 5 minutes or 10 min before you can turn it back on. then once again, it boots up okay, no hesitation...up to the desktop and then shuts off again. I checked all the capacitors on the motherboard and none of them are puffed up or burned and no burnt places on the motherboard...looks clean. Then when I tried to get it to boot again, I heard a tiny sparking type sound and something smelled funny...not a lot and no smoke and no burnt spots on the motherboard...BUT now the fan on the CPU isn't spinning at all...it was before. The Power supply has a 4 prong square connector that is plugged into the motherboard.
Thanks
Barbara

Sounds more like a faulty Power Supply Unit.

Do you have a spare or a friend that could let you borrow one to test your system with?


Edit: OK..I have read through your post again and had another thought. It still could be a faulty PSU, but also I have come accross this many times, it could also be a faulty heatsink fan causing the PC to just shut off after a few minutes. It is a built in fail-safe that PC's have. This would explain the booting up and shutting off, but the spark noise still points towards the PSU.

I put in a new power supply and a new CPU fan, Everything is plugged in. I turned it on and the fan on the Power supply is turning but the CPU fan isn't. Nothing is coming up on the screen at all now.

thanks
Barbara

it sounds like you power supply died and killed your hardware

if you have a computer with the same socket i would start swapping out parts with those of a known working computer (test the RAM from your dead computer in a known working one, do the same with other parts except the faulty power supply), sort it out and see what parts are dead, then you can make a decision if its worth using those parts and making a new computer or if its better to just get a new one

the other option if you don't want to do that much part swapping or don't have the resources is to just say its a dead computer and get a new one, 1.7 Ghz is fairly old so you could say you need a new one anyways

Hi
No other computer that I can swap parts with. I may have to rebuild or buy new one. It is my friend's computer...right now I have him using a computer I rebuilt. He may just have to keep using it for now..It is a bit slower and only using Windows 98, but for now it is something. I have a feeling that something burned out on the other one...the slight sparking noise makes me feel like that is what happened.
I know it is old, but he really doesn't do that much with a computer to warrant going out and buying a new one. I was hoping it wouldn't be that much to get it back running.
thanks
Barbara