[marybels]

Hi all,

I hope someone can help me. I have a friend who is seemingly having power supply problems. he has an older puter, a PERFORMANCE 1800 CX from Gateway purchased in 2001. The hard drive is a Western Digital 80-GB 7200-RPM IDE Hard Disk Drive, and PC800 128-MB 128Bit RIMM upgraded with 1 GB added. it currently houses a 250-Watt 3.3-Volt Power Supply and has been freezing even at start up. It originally came with ME, but has XP pro on it. I need to replace the power supply, can anyone tell me where I can get one?

Thanks,

Marybels

[mphenterprises]

Hi Marybels. Okay, a 250 Watt Power Supply is severely under-powered, even for a basic computer. Here is a list of 28 Power Supplies that will work within your friend's computer.

Now, since this is a Gateway, there should be no problem swapping the Power Supplies. I would also suggest you have your friend review this Document.

[marybels]

Hello, and thanks...
I did a search, but was not sure if I should get a 500 or not...I figured I would ask to make sure. The puter my friend has is an old one of mine, so now I know what to do to help him...He knows NOTHING about puters, except how to turn them on or off...lol I told him it was either power supply or hard drive, and we tried the hard drive first. I was searching other questions, when I found a simular problem, so knew it was probably the first thing I thought, the power supply...One more question, If I put in a larger wattage, it will not burn somethig out, will it. I'm not much up on electrical stuff, but boy do I follow pictured directions well...lol
Thanks again,
Marybels

[mphenterprises]

Good question. No, a more powerful Power Supply will not burn anything out. Think of it this way, if you run a 250 Watt Power Supply beyond its capacity, you run the risk of damaging everything within your computer. If you run a 1000 Watt Power Supply in that same computer, you will not even come close to the maximum capacity that Power Supply can handle.

For the average user, a 450-500 Watt Power Supply is ample power. Make sure you both read the Document I presented within the first post and you should be fine. If you have any other questions at all, please ask.

[ddms70]

Freezing on startup could be a number of things. I'd suggest getting memtest and running it (preferrably from a floppy) on bootup, preferrably overnight and seeing if there are ANY ram errors.