-> WC> It's not just the vents at the fan that get dirty. My AT
-> WC> power supply was FILLED with crud on the inside too. 

-> WC> Took a massive amount of cleaning inside of the components
-> WC> and circuit board. 

-> WC> I found a dead simple way to do it but can't recomend it as
-> WC> yet as tried once I've no idea if it compromized the PS in
-> WC> any way. 

-> I agree that I should remove the power supply and open it's
-> case to look for dust but I was focusing on getting a working
-> modem in place at the time and didn't want to get sidelined
-> with that. 

I'm going to load the cleaned PS with a dead drive and hook the 
ACER CD-ROM up to it to test it out.

The Acer will play audio CD's through the headphone jack
kludged up on a desktop with a power supply.

If it tests OK I'll slap it in the H.P. in the next couple of weeks.
It worked in a previous machine.
--- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5