My dell vostro 400 has been slowing down over the last few months. Yesterday, it locked up and would not respond to the mouse or keyboard. I tried the ctrl-alt-delete and it did not respond. I waited 20 minutes and still nothing. I had to shut down by holding the power button and when I turned the pc back on the power button light flashed amber. I unplugged the pc, waited 10 minutes and then it powered up to a black screen with a flashing cursor. With the help of this forum, I was able to run a chkdsk /r and the system came back up and appeared to be running ok. This afternoon, it locked up again and would only shut down with the power button. The power button flashed amber again and I left it unplugged for 20 minutes while I reseated the memory modules, video card and firewire card. The pc started up and I'm running another chkdsk through xp right now. What are some of the signs of dying power supply or hard drive?
System Specs
Win XP
Quad Core 2
4GB Ram
500 Gb hard drive
Dual monitor set up
Thanks,
Ed