[Darklightr]

My girlfriend powered her eMachines desktop off and left for a two week vacation. When she returned, the computer would not power on. Nothing at all happens when the power button is pressed. I tried the computer with a new power cable and a different outlet and got the same result.

A month ago, I installed an additional stick of RAM and a new video card in her computer, but it had been working perfectly since then.

Any ideas what may be the cause? My initial thought was that the power supply died, but could it be the motherboard or hard drive?

[Rich-M]

They are known for losing power supplies, but they also have a bad habit of taking motherboard with them.

[Solent Guy]

Well, things to check out are the usual, loose leads, both outside and inside the PC. Check the power cable going to the Mainboard too. Its most likely to be one fault and not everything in the case as it were.
If you have another PSU at hand do a quick test using this - its a good idea to keep a spare - even if its a cheap one - these things can just die with little warning - I know I had one literally burn out while the PC was running!
Oh and do be careful of putting your hard drive into another PC, if you do make sure its not the only drive in the second PC cos Win XP hates to find the hard drive its installed upon being moved from PC to PC - it thinks you might be trying to install XP on second machine - as if anyone would even dream of doing such a bad and dishonest thing.