Asus M2NPV-VM shuts down after 4-5 seconds

[tfboy]

This is my girlfriend's PC which has now started doing the above. Power on, and about 4 seconds later, just before the video comes to life, it shuts down.

Nothing on the system changed, it was working fine and then recently started doing this.

Once in a blue moon, it will start OK, it's just a matter of insisting, say, 30 times. When it does start, the machine is stable and there are no hardware / OS glitches apparent. Interestingly, if once running I ask to restart, more often than not, it will NOT restart, or rather it will, but 4 seconds in, power off.

I've searched the net on this particular problem and it looks like I'm not alone. Some people suggest PSU, other suggest the very tempremental memory controller, but I'm using a decent quality PSU and the RAM is two sticks of 512MB Corsair DDR2 5300, and I've tried unplugging everything from the motherboard including the RAM and it still persists.

I've tried updating to the latest BIOS (once I managed to get it to boot ) but no changes.

The only thing left I can think of which I haven't yet tried is taking the motherboard out of the case and power it up just on a bench in case there's a short to ground somewhere, but I can't see that being a problem, and other people who've had the same problem said doing this didn't fix it.

Fortunately, Asus give a 36 month warranty so I can RMA it with Scan where I bought it from (along with the RAM, CPU, PSU).

But before I do that, can anyone suggest anything?

[pulla]

Hi,

I am having exactly the same problem. I faced it for two days ago and had not much time to check. Till now I have disconnected all cables and all drives. Further I removed the RAM.

For me 3 things are responsible. Either the mainboard, CPU, or PSU. Or a combination of them.

Unfortunatelly I have no tool to measure the voltage from the PSU. I gonna borrow one and do that on the weekend.

If you found a solution meanwhile please post.

thx
Thomas

[tfboy]

Hi,

I am having exactly the same problem. I faced it for two days ago and had not much time to check. Till now I have disconnected all cables and all drives. Further I removed the RAM.

For me 3 things are responsible. Either the mainboard, CPU, or PSU. Or a combination of them.

Unfortunatelly I have no tool to measure the voltage from the PSU. I gonna borrow one and do that on the weekend.

If you found a solution meanwhile please post.

thx
Thomas

Hi Thomas.

By all means try with a different PSU, but it's not that - I've already tried and the normal PSU is a decent quality Enermax one.

I'll give it a few more tries, but I reckon it would just be easier for me to RMA it. But I'm a bit concerned the replacement board, if the same model, would start having the same issues x months down the line.

[pulla]

Hi,

I will ask our system administrator in the company to check it with another PSU. Because I don't have a second at home.

If this does not help I take the board with the CPU and go to the shop where I bought both things 2 years ago. They should check it and replace it. Good that we have 3 years of warranty on both components.

Concerning the motherboard, when I bougth it I immediately had to return it because it was not working at all. Nothing happended when I powered on it. But this was from the beginning and since then it was running fine (the gave me a new board, no repair) !

Keep you informed what is damaged in my case.

bye
Thomas

[Leggie]

As a long shot, have you tried monitoring the motherboard/CPU temperatures? I've issues before with the PC crashing simply because the component wasn't beeing cooled properly - in one case the CPU heatsink simply needed the dust to be hoovered out.

Also have you tried running Memtest86+ just to be sure it's not the RAM?

[tfboy]

I doubt it's a temperature problem. If will shut down even when being turned on for the first time where everything's cool. Also, I don't see why all of a sudden it would work.

Will try a memory test, but it also shuts down when no RAM is insterted so I didn't think it could be memory related

[Koolpc]

Virus?

[speardane]

I had a similar problem - for me it was the PSU 0n the same MB
Zalman may be good for many things - but despite paying a premium price their PSU was c**p
The replacement corsair PSU (I bought - due to unhappy RMA from scan) has been perfect - so far.

[pulla]

I am back from the store. My mainboard is broken. I am glad that I have 36 months of warranty from Asus. After 6 months the normal way is that the seller returns to Asus for repairing. After repairing you get it back. But I could make a deal with the seller and I got another mainboard of same type/revision which was already repaired from Asus one time. I did this deal because I did not want to wait weeks to get back my repaired motherboard.

Hope this replacement works as long as I want to use it.

br
Thomas

[tfboy]

Hmm so there is a "repair" available?

Sounds a bit strange. I mean if they know a component is dodgy and they replace it with something else, how can they be sure the replacement will last longer? Or if they know it will, then surely it's bad board design / component choice first time round?

Anyway, glad you got yours fixed. Guess I'm ready for my second RMA in as many weeks

[pulla]

About the repair, the guy from the store confirmed that my board is broken. But he does not know what exactly is damaged. He just knows it switches off by itself :-) So he sends it to Asus and they will know what to do and "how" to fix.

Hope I did not start a confusion about "repiar".

Hope the second board lives longer ;-)

[EnglishLion]

Hope this isn't an inherent problem in all M2NPV-VM boards as I have one as the heart of my media centre PC. It's served me well for over 2 years. The only problem I have with it is with the onboard sound quality.

Hope my board keeps going...

[Koolpc]

About the repair, the guy from the store confirmed that my board is broken. But he does not know what exactly is damaged. He just knows it switches off by itself :-) So he sends it to Asus and they will know what to do and "how" to fix.

Hope I did not start a confusion about "repiar".

Hope the second board lives longer ;-)

What test did he do to say it was definitely borked?

[pulla]

What test did he do to say it was definitely borked?

I gave them the board with the CPU and their service center tested it. They replaced the CPU by another one to figure out either mainboard or CPU causes the power off.

[zyce]

I have an Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe which just got the same problem. PSU starts up, fans starts and then after a few seconds the system shuts down.

I removed evertyhing from the motherboard except CPU, same problem. Tried with another PSU, same problem. Tried with another CPU, same problem. So, it MUST be the motherboard. Been googling a bit and it seem like many Asus have this problem, not everyone have tested so far that they know it is the motherboard for sure but they have exactly this problem.

But the good thing is the 36 months warranty from Asus, my motherboard is 23 months old now and I've just sent the reseller an e-mail to check what to do.

Would be very interesting to know what component is causing the problem if it would be possible to fix it yourself.

[zyce]

Just want to inform you guys and if someone finds this thread when searching for the same problem. I managed to fix my motherboard today. Since last time I wrote I've been fighting with the reseller who refuses to RMA my motherboard as it's out of the stores 12 month warranty even though that Asus have 36 months warranty and in Sweden end-users can't RMA the motherboard themselves.

Anyway, I've found another forum where i read that the same problem existed when the BIOS were bad (I didn't flash mine or anything). So, one way was to ebay a new ready-flashed BIOS for this motherboard and replace it, I didn't want to wait 2 weeks for US->Sweden shipping. I managed to find another computer with the same slot for the BIOS chip, booted that machine to DOS, removed the original BIOS chip and replaced it with my chip while computer was running. I then flashed my BIOS with the latest firmware for my motherboard with Uniflash (this tool doesn't check if it's the correct motherboard, as it isn't )

Then I took my chip and placed it on my motherboard again, it's now booting up and working!! If anyone have the same issue and can't get hold of another computer to try this solution you can always send me your BIOS chip and I can do it for you and send back.

That's it from me, hope you guys will get your problem solved!

Rgrds
Michael