I have a Dell All in One PC since 3 years. I installed Windows 8 last year and it was all good till yesterday. Today, when I tried to switch it on, it just doesnt get switched on. I opened up the cabinet and blew air to clean up the dust , and then it started, but again switched off automatically after 2 minutes. After that, Im trying to click the start button, but just nothing happens. But the yellow light on the mother board keeps on glowing . What can it be ? How to debug ?
Odds are your power supply has given up the ghost. You can try to lighten the load by unplugging hard drive(s) and cd-rom(s) so that all that is plugged in would be graphics card (unless integrated of course) RAM and CPU. Try to see if it boots up with the minimal hardware. This should at least get you to the BIOS, then you can go about plugging in components piece by piece. The other area to check is the voltage on the BIOS battery and if the RAM and other cards are seated all ok and that with time/heat and case flexing they have not worked loose. If you have a spare PSU (Power Supply Unit) that is the same style then you could piggyback this temporarily to see if it will startup. But only do this if you are confident with live electrical circuits. Otherwise take it to a PC shop and ask them to plug in a PSU to see if this is the fault here.
Op said that after cleaning dust off, the machine started and shut down after 2 minutes. Looks like some overheat to me. Is there a cooling fan on top of the CPU? Does it run? If less cooling has happened for a certain period of time overheated CPU and it got damaged. More than 74° C is mostly dangerous for semi conductors
Not had much sleep and coffee not working yet. Yes it maybe thermal shutdown but I dare say if he has blown it out as he states, then the dust bunnies are no longer cooking his components. But for all we know the damage maybe done. I am sure OP will be along soon when he has had time to test things some more. If he has long term dust problem then I dare say the capacitors could be bulging or maybe even leaking.
Windows 8 has worked for me for since last year. Its just last week, this problem started. I think, its better to take the PC to a computer store.
My desktop had a similar issue last year. But I also smelled something funny. The fan on the video card had failed. Glad I had an older (slower) at hand. But what a pain redoing the video drivers, as the computer had three drives with bootable Windows OS.
I fixed one this week with dying PSU which is why I was thinking this way earlier about the PSU. All that would happen when you applied power was the front LED would light up and no fans would even spin. When I "jumped" it with a PSU it worked perfectly fine so I removed the old PSU and placed the good one inside. Though it does sound to me now like a combination of dust that has coated the machine and chocked the life out of it. Smoking near a computer will make it sticky and then the dust naturally likes to stick to that, haven seen many a brown PC in my time. Perhaps a good blast with an air-compressor from a local friendly garage might be a quick call if you have one that is willing to lend you their airline? At least you can then rule out slightly dust causing the overheating. Otherwise try to report back how you get on if you take it to a PC store.