PC stops working ... then suddenly starts. Any Ideas why?

[Rajwa]

Story;
Thunderstorms knocked power out for a day. Power is turned back on, but PC won't start (doesn't post or anything). The light on the motherboard was on showing it was getting some power, so I figured the Motherboard was fried. I leave the PC plugged in behind me while I use my crappier backup PC. Suddenly my backup PC starts experiencing some problems so I shut it down, just to hear a PC fan blowing behind me. I turn around and I see the PC that wouldn't start now has spinning fans. I turn it off to move it to my desk and plug everything in and try to turn it on but it doesn't turn on again. After spamming the power button and the I/O switch on and off it randomly turns back on again.

Question;
I am completely confused how a PC can seem to randomly revive itself like this. Does anyone know how/why this would happen? And if anyone else has experienced something like this before, did the revived PC continue working, or decide to return to the grave soon after?

[Cephius]

Do you have a surge protector hooked up to the power cord that goes to your computer? If not, the power getting knocked out might have borked your power supply. It would explain why you're not getting it to stay on constantly... the power supply is not constantly giving enough juice.

[Rajwa]

Yea I have everything plugged into a surge protector, but it is one of those cheap $10 ones from anywhere that does more of splitting 1 outlet into many, and less protection from the surges. I'm considering now it could be a faulty PSU, which is disappointing since I bought a more expensive PSU to help counter surges. I'm just more curious how it randomly turned itself back on at the moment.

[Octavious]

This sounds like a Power Supply issue, you could try popping in a cheap PSU and see if that fixes it before buying a new one. Or send your old one in if it has a repair policy. A friend of mine went through something similar, the PC would start then stop, then it would pick up again. After some tracking around we tried a new PSU and it worked.