[branyangossard]

Hello,
I've been having trouble with my desktop PC. There had been problems with two hard drives dying, as well as what I believe may be power supply issues. Before my past hard drive died, there were boot up problems; sometimes the computer would beep when turned on (nothing would come on the screen), sometimes it would come on very loud, with the fan running very high (again nothing would come on the screen) and sometimes it would boot all the way up until I got onto Windows, but an accidental bump of the desk or something of that nature would cause the computer to freeze, with the screen going into an odd checkered glitchy pattern of whatever was on the screen at the time. This was sometimes temporarily fixed by pulling out and putting the power cord back in (hence my theory of the power supply problem).
My friend recently installed a new hard drive and Windows Vista for me, and it seemed to be working okay at first, but then some of the problems I think might be power-associated soon re-emerged. I got that glitchy, checkerboard screen randomly without any kind of jarring, and I occasionally get beeping on start up. Also, when the computer goes into screensaver/sleep mode, it will not come back on and you have to restart it.
Does this sound like a power supply problem? If so, does it sound internal or possibly like a problem with the electrical socket in my house? Can anyone help me out with what to do here?

Thank you,
James

[crjdriver]

It is possible that it is a pw supply. To test, swap in a known good pw supply. If it works, great. If not, then I would replace the mb.

FWIW, I would put my money on a failing board in this case. This what makes me think mb rather than pw supply

fan running very high

[branyangossard]

Yeah, the fan will come on very high and loud, and then slow down after a few seconds.
Anyway, here are the specs of my computer if it helps at all:
It is a Dell Dimension 3000, Pentium 4 Processor
Specs are listed here:

http://reviews.cnet.com/desktops/del...=mncolBtm;rnav

Everything is factory prebuilt except these parts that were added:
-Two Centon 1 gb RAM cards
-500 gb EIDE hard drive
-120 gb hard drive
-DVD burner

Thank you for your replies and help