Gateway Profile 5 - power issues

My son has a Gateway Profile 5 that he bought about 18 months ago used. Everything worked fine for the bmost part, but when it acted up it was nothing more than a reformat of the HD wouldn't remedy. About 4 weeks ago he said that it was shutting down randomly....sometimes it would run for 12+ hours and then shut down, others it would shut down after being powered on for 20 minutes, sometimes as little as 4 minutes. I took it home and plugged it in and, wouldn't you know, it ran fine for the remainder of the afternoon and overnight. It did randomly shut down the following afternoon, but powered up again with no problems. I cleaned the inside of the bunnies (there weren't many), reformatted the HD, restored his files from a Norton backup, and sent it home with him. Everything worked fine for about 3 weeks, then the random shut downs began again. Now it won't power on at all. My experience with failing PSU's has been that one minute it works, then the next it's dead........no random shutting down symptoms. My research on the net is that there are various things that could be causing the prob........failed psu, bad video card, dead MB, etc. Before I start throwing money at what may (or may not) be the problem, I thought I would post the situation to my friends here at Geek Squad...........you have always come through for me in the past, and I am hoping you will once again!!

 

What did it do when it used to shut down? Did it just go black on the screen, or did it give an error first?
Did all the lights on the computer go off, or were they still on? What about the fan(s) - still running, or not?

What is happening now when you try to boot it? Any lights? Fans? Anything electric?
Have you checked the power cord, and maybe swapped it with another? Make sure it is securely plugged in.

 

Yikes. Please don't insult us by calling us geek squad. I never want to be associated with that group.
Is it an all-in-one computer?
http://support.gateway.com/s/Profile/Profile5/3501739/2900074nv.shtml
Does it use a power adapter similar to what a laptop uses?
http://support.gateway.com/s/Profile/profile5/3501738/3501738faq55.shtml

Adapters and even the connector on the motherboard can go bad. If so, it would be the same as pulling the plug on the computer.

 

It would just go black,like someone pulled the power cord. No error messages, no beeping, nothing, just on one minute and suddenly turns everything off (all lights, fan, monitor, etc).

Now I get absolutely nothing then pushing the power button......no fan, monitor, nothing electric - zip, zero, nada.

 

OMG.......I am so SORRY!!! That was an unintentional slip, I meant to say Major Geeks - call me embarrassed and red in the face. I certainly do not want to insult anyone on this board!! :-o

Yes, it does use a power adapter, however I have looked for an indicator light and there does not seem to be one on it. I will try another power cord to see if that is the issue. Is this typical behavior of a bad power brick? As I said in my original post, my experiences with one going bad is much different that this. Also, there were no beeps or other funny noises prior to shutting down which would have lead me to think maybe the HD was going bad or the MB being the culprit.

 

Hi mzkittey,

Have you solved your shutdown problem with your profile 5 by this time? hope you did. Exact problem I had for 10 months, and I did solved it finally.

 

Mine is still doing it and I have yet to find a remedy for it; please, how did you resolve your issue?!