Unless, a true power surge or glitch got you while asleep, I thought it would effect ram alone. Pretty much would take out the PSU as well plus other electronics. I say this for non-powered devices that's about what it would take. I exclude any other cause for now.
My desktop machine (Dell Dimension E510) strated power-cycling at boot time when I turned it on last night. It had been running fine prior to that. I turned it off in the morning after it had been up for 5-7 days and when I turned it back on last evening the power-cycling started.
I disconnected everything the HDD and the optical drive and tried again. Still had the power cycling on and off. Then removed all 4 sticks of RAM and tried again.
At this point the power remained on and I got the expected beep codes indicating no memory.
I tried inserting 1 stick at a time and rebooting but, in each instance, the power cycling started again. As soon as I went back to booting with no RAM loaded, the power would remain on.
I hadn't been experiencing any RAM errors prior to this. Could something have zapped all four modules while the machine was off? I'm going to see if I have any compatible RAM lying around so I can try that.
(The HDD is fine as I was able to access it using a SATA-to-USB adapter.)
Does this sound like RAM, PSU, or possibly motherboard?
Thanks.
Gary

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