Power related crashes?-please advise!

Hello. I have been the proud owner of the following rig for the past two years:

P5WD2 Premium Asus Motherboard
1 GB RAM
250 GB Hard drive
Norwood Micro 400 Watt Power supply
Connect3d X800XL
Athlon 939 3500+ Venice
Note: Everything is clocked @ stock!

She's a nice rig and has performed flawlessly over the years playing some of the newest games without any sort of problem--Oblivion, FEAR, Quake 4, and hours of BF2142. Never had any sort of problem...until a few weeks ago. I was playing Microsoft's Freelancer (a fairly old game) and the computer completely crashed about 15 minutes into the game. Pressing the power button yielded no result...after alot of experimentation, the only way i could get it to start up again was by completely unplugging the surge protector from the wall, wait 5 seconds, then plug it back in. After this incident, the computer would crash about 2 minutes in no matter what game i played (even Counterstrike 1.6!) but would otherwise give me no problems while typing, checking email, listening to tunes, ext. Immediately I assumed there was a power supply problem, though i could not figure out how that could be considering my 400 watts had been sufficient only days earlier! Well anyway, i spent a couple of days trying to game on my laptop, but frusterated by 5 fps in games as basic as Galactic Civilizations, I made another attempt to fix my gaming rig.

A friend of mine suggested that my video card might be overheating and that did make sense to me. I spent 2 hours cleaning the entire computer desk and went through 2 cans of compressed air cleaning every single surface of the computer and the video card. Sure enough, the card was quite a bit dusty, but after I was done it was good as new. I put everything back together, started up Counterstrike 1.6, and crossed my fingers. I was sure that the problem had been fixed...until it crashed after about 15 minutes (an improvement over 2 minutes).

My friend's next suggestion was to take the video card out and try playing with the onboard X200 core built into the motherboard. Strangely enough, the computer no longer crashed when playing games (though I only tested it with a 5 hour session of Counterstrike; I'm sure it can't handle the likes of X3: The Reunion or Oblivion!). However, this is only a temporary solution; I cant game on the X200.

Next, I ran virus scans with 3 different programs. I had a few adware on my comp which i promptly removed and confirmed they were gone. This had no affect on the crashing when the vid card was put back in.

So last night i went to bed content with being able to play counterstrike, but eager to get this problem resolved. Well, I woke up to find my rig had found itself a NEW routine! :confused: Upon pressing the power button, the computer boots for about five seconds, then crashes. I am able to get it back on again by unplugging the surge protector, waiting five seconds, then plugging it back in. Pressing the power button a second time yields the same result. After unplugging, replugging, and pressing it a third time, the computer boots successfully. Gaming with my onboard video core still does not crash the rig. This might seem like a minor inconvinience, but for God's sake, I am not going to fiddle around with this thing indefinitely.

My techy friend is all out of ideas. CompUSA, the place that I bought the rig, the video card, and the power supply at, has closed up all of its stores in Minnesota (the state that I live in.) I am out of ideas.

Does anyone have any suggestions, ideas, or comments for this despirate man? :surrender:

Much appreciated,

Matt P.

Do you have a psu you could borrow to try out ? :O_o1:

Personally I'm surprised it works at all - you've got an AMD A64 CPU in an Intel S775 motherboard according to what you've posted!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by scrandman

Personally I'm surprised it works at all - you've got an AMD A64 CPU in an Intel S775 motherboard according to what you've posted!

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Did'nt notice that but it does say socket 939 !! :crazy:

Thanks for the quick responses, guys!

@ Scrandman: My mistake--I posted the wrong Motherboard model. Not sure what it is, but its a S939 capable Asus build.

Unfortuantely, I just had another incident. Having just eaten supper, I came back to my comp (which I had turned off during). I experienced the same crashing 2 seconds after boot that I've been talking about. Only this time, it took about 20 minutes to finally get it to boot. I tried it a dozen times with the onboard, but I finally got it to boot by sticking the video card back in! This is insane...

So does anyone have any recommendations? Colossus, I do not have another power supply and unfortunately I don't have the expertise to install it. If I had to, I'd buy an Antec 500 watt PSU, but I'm not completely sure that its at fault. I mean for God's sake, one day I'm playing Oblivion, Fear, ARMA, and the next day its crashing for Freelancer and everything else.

Any suggestions, guys?

sorry for double post, but suddenly my computer has stopped crashing (even with vid card in). does this indicate that it is a power problem?

First thing I'd try would be testing the RAM with Memtest.

done. no problems.

very strange...i just ran ATI Tool in the "Test for Artifacts" tool for 30 minutes and the video card did not go above 72 degrees. and no crashes either. what the hell is going on?

Did you by any chance unplug all your psu cables and then plug them back in?

no, i have not.

today has seen a huge amount of inconsistency. i played counterstrike for hours this morning without crashes, then i decieded to start of freelancer. it crashed 5 minutes in. ever since then, counterstrike has been crashing, too. this most recent crash was different from the rest. the fps dropped to about 5 for a few seconds, then crashed. most other crashes are immediate...you don't know it until it hits.

noooo idea what to do. :crazy:

Installed any new programs recently? New antivirus? Updated any drivers? Have a look in control panel -> Performance and maintenance -> administrative tools -> event viewer, and see if there are any errors in the system log.

hmmm...well, i actually did install Alchohol 120% on my computer shortly before the crashes took place and i have a virtual drive (K) with an ISO file in My Computer...

nothing looks abnormal in the system logs...just the usual stuff.

It has started to sound like an unhappy driver to be honest !! Can you do a system restore to a previous point before the new software to see if it runs ok ? :juggle:

i could do a system restore, but in the mean time i'd be loosing nearly a terabyte of music (purchased, of course) and alot of documents. i wish i hadn't broken my 2 GB flash drive :surprised:

Just to reiterate, i have made NO driver or hardware changes since this has all started. it was literally an overnight change. i did download Alchohol 120% about 3/4 weeks before this all started, so not sure if that might be tied in somehow.

@Collosus: What does it indicate by no error logs? That it's a hardware problem as opposed to software?

:help:

No error logs in mem test ?

Have you any way of testing the HDD? If you can get on the net you could download 'Spinrite', either from the company that makes it or from 'other sources'. Will tell you pretty much instantly if the drive is buggered if you do a level 2 scan.

Other than that I can only suggest the system restore or swapping out the GFX and PSU one at a time and seeing what effect that has.