Power-up Issue

[Cuc Tu]

We have a Dell Optilex GX280 which gets occasional use. Trying to use it this morning, it makes an internittent buzzing, like from a speaker (Bzzzt, Bzzzt...) and the fans come on in hyper drive. (I thought it might be plugged into 220, but we don't have that here).

I took it over to my desk, popped open the case and pushed on all the cards/connectors, and plugged it into my monitor and USB KB/mouse. Now it powered up fine. But the guy using it said it worked once for him too.

Could this be a failing power supply?

[Cuc Tu]

Latest, during power-up, the video is flickering on/off. This has an upgrade ATI 300 something card. I tried both the DVI and VGA splitters with same basic behavior - does it on post and in bios, but clears up. It also looked like it was flickering with the on-board VGA, but that could have been the monitor adjusting. I think it was flickering though, and it cleared up real quick and displayed some error message about an unsupported configuration using the onboard with an ad-in card...

[Cuc Tu]

Oh yea, it has 4 lights on the back, ABCD

they kind of toggle green to orange, BC orange, then CD orange, then D orange...otherwise they are green.

And right when it shuts off, the fans kick full for a fraction of a second.

[Cuc Tu]

Our IS group said they will simply scrap the PC since it is not worth the time to even open it up. So we will buy a new one.