Blinking amber light

I am experiencing some difficulty with my desktop computer. It is a Dell Vostro 220s, Windows XP SP3, 3GB ram, 250GB hard drive. A couple nights ago we had a power outage. I get up the next morning to find my desktop off (I usually leave it on). I go to turn it on and the power light comes on blue, like normal, and the fans kick on. However, after a second or two, it turns amber and begins blinking.

I googled what the potential problems could be and how to troubleshoot it. I'm assuming based on my search results that it is a power-based failure of some kind, typically either the power supply or the motherboard.

I came across this while I was searching: ftp://ftp.dell.com/Manuals/all-produ...nual_en-us.pdf

excerpt from page 2:
So I viewed the diagram linked there and started disconnecting one thing at a time. I took the two cables out of the hard drive, tried to boot, same problem. I took the cable out of what looks to me like the power connector (based on the diagram from pg 4; it is labeled #1. When I restarted, it finally did something different. When I pressed the power button with the power connector disconnected, the light was solid amber and it didn't seem like anything was running except the fans. The fans were on full blast.


So long story short, what can we determine from that? In case it makes a difference, I should note that I had everything but the power cord (monitors, usb devices, ethernet, etc) disconnected.

I thank you all in advance for any help.