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Why won't my iMac power on?

I have a 20" iMac (2006) that won't boot up.  There's a little bit of history to it, when I replaced the internal power assembly after it was dead in the water after being recovered from a pawn shop post office break-in.  This fixed the issue for nearly a year.  Two months ago, it wouldn't start.  Plugged in, the power button did nothing.  I unplugged it, put it in the corner, and forgot about it until two weeks ago.

I plugged it in to mess with it, and it powered on fine.  Ran it for two weeks with no issues.  I came back from Xmas break to find it off.  Again, the power button won't do anything.  I've tried different plugs, different power cables, etc.  No dice.  I'm reluctant to replace the internal power assembly (it cost $300+) to fix the issue again, but I'd like to know what the issue could be, and how I can better diagnose it.

Any ideas or suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
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Mike_Carroll
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I'll try that, any reasoning behind that, like what might be at fault, or why it did it in the first place?
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Would this indicate a need for a new power supply, or just an intermittent issue that will need to be addressed every so often?  What can cause the problem, a surge or something?
Generally speaking a surge although it's hard to tell what comes up the power line sometimes. I could tell you stories about power problems that you wouldn't believe. They'll all be in the book, one day when I get time (c;
Not sure that sitting here we can say for sure whether it's the P/S itself or something in the motherboard's circuitry that utilizes the P/S to fire up the Mac. If the Mac is worth keeping, it might be worth paying Apple tech support to take a look. At least you should get some answer on what the problem is.
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PCBONEZ:  Any advice on who to use?  Do I just post a topic and see who replies?  I've never heard of replacing the capacitors on a MB, have you had any degree of success with this type of repair?
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Have the caps on the board actually failed? You can tell from the capacitors... failed ones bulge and leak. In extreme cases, they can also explode. I've replaced capacitors on boards and mobos. It's a tricky job but far from impossible. Caps failure will eventually cause power on problems but generally speaking, the machine becomes highly unstable before this happens.

Presumably, you've tried the disconnect for a couple of hours?

The disconnect worked.  It turned on this morning, but when I went to wake it from sleep by hitting the space bar, it powered off, and would not turn back on.  I've got it waiting now, we'll try it again in the morning, and we've now plugged it into a UPS to try to avert any surges, but I'm still worried with the frequency of the power outages.
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Oops... sorry, I see somebody else has already suggested badcaps.net (c:

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