Leaving computer on all the time

[jambo101]

My 10 year old Dell computer is having trouble starting up, When i push the on button i here a swoosh like the fan is starting but thats it, the light on the on button flashes amber and thats all that happens, after about 5 -6 tries of turning it off then on again it usually fires up. To get around this problem is there any downside to just leaving it on all the time?
Thanks

[Pharaoh]

1. No

Just leave it on. It just hoes to sleep m I rarely shut mine down.

[PoliticAverse]

2. The downside is electricity cost and possibly decreased lifetime. 10 years is a long time

in the computer world. When is the last time it was opened up and vacuumed ?

[trotsky]

3. ^^ This, definitely this.

Open it up and vacuum the heck out of it. Be sure to use a plastic nozzle on the vacuum so you don't accidentally short anything out.

It probably needs a new power supply by now too, but that's an investment I wouldn't necessarily make in a 10 year old computer.

[Pharaoh]

5. Get a can of compressed air

To blow out the dust, I can't imagine a vacuum.
The electricity is negligible....

[Go Vols]

10. +1

I reboot maybe once every 2-3 weeks,never turn it off otherwise.I open it up once a year and blow it out with compressed air,take out the CPU,clean it and put on new thermal paste.

[amerikat]

12. Nix on the vacuum cleaner.

I've seen my shop vac generate a 2 inch spark even with a plastic nozzle. A two inch spark needs thousands of volts. This especially true when low humidity levels are present. Not so much with high humidity. I clean my pc innards with small paint brushes and only when its humid.

[jambo101]

7. Lotsa dust

Opened it up and vacuumed out 10 years worth of dust.Might improve things as it is now ventilated
I'm not very computer savvy and the thought of buying another computer,hooking it up and transferring all the data is a daunting challenge for some one like me who is still looking for the prequel of computers for dummies..

[jambo101]

11. After cleaning i turned it off

Took me about 10 tries to get the computer to turn back on so i guess the cleaning didnt rectify the problem, o was about to give up when i noticed the printer screen was on so i turned off the printer and the computer started up on the next try

[Kali]

4. back up your files while you still can!

really - back up any files to a thumb drive or external hard drive before it dies, then do as above, open it up and clean it.

[gvstn]

6. Amber light on a DELL is almost always power supply.

A 10 year old Dell is going to start having motherboard problems (leaking capacitor on those old boards). 10 years really is at the outside of their lifespan.

You can get a cheap power supply which I wouldn't usually recommend but I'm not sure I would invest in a quality power supply for an old machine. If it has IDE cables and doesn't use SATA drives then I definitely would just buy a cheap replacement if you want to try and squeeze another year or so out of it.

[BlueJazz]

9. Spot on, chap

[Sentath]

8. I'm just here to support Kali's point 'Backup! Early and often!'

No, really. It is the best advice I have, and she said it first.

[DavidG_WI]

13. It's the PSU

Just make sure you check the existing PSU cable, Dell for a while used the same physical connector with different wiring that without an adapter you'd fry the mobo and possibly the CPU and ram.

On the other hand, if you like you can get a low end system that uses a fraction of the power and blows the doors off of it performance wise. Like an AMD Kabini based system.