My DEAD PC - Really Strange

[dannyjw]

Hey all,

was looking for similar threads to this but could find none, so here goes!

Basically when I left for work this morning, my PC was fine. It had been on through the night and i shut it down in the morning.

When I got home I went to turn it on, and there was no response. It was dead. I then took the side off to check that everything was plugged in and everything was, and the LED on the mobo was on meaning the mobo was recieving power.

If i unplug the power cable, then plug it back in, when i press the power button I get a quick burst of life and all the fans spin and lights come on for less than a second then nothing.. When I press the power again there is nothing more, not even a burst of life. Its only when i unplug and plug back in I get a moment of life.

Ive tried removed all components abnd hoovered the dust out, and even on the bare minimum of components I get no change. Ive tried diff power cables and plug sockets and no change. This has come at a real bad time with work and stuff that needs doing.

My setup is as follows

Athlon 64 fx-60 (skt 939)
ASUS A8N SLI Dekluxe mobo
2gb (4x512mb)
100gb 10,000rpm raptor
500gb maxtor
Win XP

So from what I can tell my PSU dosent seem to be the prob as the mobo is getting power, and im guessing that means the mobo (should be) OK.

At the mo im thinking fried cpu
maybe?

Any ideas/advice/knowledge/funny way to cheer me up would b very much apreaciated =D

ty in advance!!

Dan

[strike-down]

Try a different PSU if you can. What psu is it you have at the moment?

[Singh400]

I'd agree with the PSU part. Try with only 1 stick of ram, 1 hdd, and use on-board vga where possible.

[MaddAussie]

also try it with the reset button/ powerbutton disconnected, I had a dodgy power button once that took me ages to track down what was up

[arthurleung]

I had similar problem before and it was problem with the PSU. Back then I even replaced the motherboard, which worked for like 3 days before the system failed again.

[dannyjw]

Yeah it turned out to be the PSU. Thanks for all your help everyone!

Just replaced it and its now running perfectly again.

Just glad it wasnt my processor which was my first thought, PSU is eeeeesay!

[strike-down]

Glad you got it sorted dude
PSU is an easy one to overlook

[cheesemp]

I had the same symptoms from RAM my motherboard BIOS didn't like! Any way glad to hear its sorted.

[dannyjw]

Hey guys, im in need of your expert advice once more =( PC dead once again.

Ive been having some serious symptoms which have resulted in a PC that will not even boot.

OK basically around a week ago my PC began freezing completely on startup - pretty much 10 seconds after I login everything would go totally unresponsive, windows would be up but mouse stops moving, everything is dead, so I would restart. The freezes would get earlier and earlier (even after the PC was left off for some hours). It began freezing half way into loading XP, and also while I will be looking through BIOS. I thought its really weird that this would happen in BIOS before any windows settings were loaded.

And now, my PC does not even start booting. When I switch it on I get a black screen and my processor fan if just going really fast. (Normally when I boot up fan is seriously loud for about 5 secs before it slows and boot starts).

Im thinking its either PSU (once again) or motherboard problem. I do not think its HD as I have tried having only either of my HD's plugged in, and also haveing neither plugged in and this has no effect. PC still powers up loudly but nothing ever appears on the screen and there are no system beeps or anything.

One last thing, if I unplug my graphics card from the power supply, I get the long loud beep telling me its not plugged in. Does this mean the mobo could potentially not be the problem?

*hoping its not a dead procesor*

[dangel]

Hey guys, im in need of your expert advice once more =( PC dead once again.

Ive been having some serious symptoms which have resulted in a PC that will not even boot.

OK basically around a week ago my PC began freezing completely on startup - pretty much 10 seconds after I login everything would go totally unresponsive, windows would be up but mouse stops moving, everything is dead, so I would restart. The freezes would get earlier and earlier (even after the PC was left off for some hours). It began freezing half way into loading XP, and also while I will be looking through BIOS. I thought its really weird that this would happen in BIOS before any windows settings were loaded.

And now, my PC does not even start booting. When I switch it on I get a black screen and my processor fan if just going really fast. (Normally when I boot up fan is seriously loud for about 5 secs before it slows and boot starts).

Im thinking its either PSU (once again) or motherboard problem. I do not think its HD as I have tried having only either of my HD's plugged in, and also haveing neither plugged in and this has no effect. PC still powers up loudly but nothing ever appears on the screen and there are no system beeps or anything.

Since you had a PSU die on you - there's always a chance it did some damage on the way out (what PSU was it - a cheapy cheap one?). Got another graphic card lying round you can try? MB or graphic card could of been affected by a blown psu (i've seen both happen).

One last thing, if I unplug my graphics card from the power supply, I get the long loud beep telling me its not plugged in. Does this mean the mobo could potentially not be the problem?

Graphics cards have a beeper on them to remind you when you forget to connect the PCIE power cable to the card - that's all your hearing.

[Gibbo]

I had an identical problem a couple of weeks ago.

It turned out to be a short on the boot HDD board.

Unplug all your hard drives from both the motherboard and the PSU and see if the system will POST.

If it does then reconnect your HDDs one by one until you find the culprit.

[dannyjw]

Thanks for the replies guys!

When the last PSU died, the replacement sorted everything and the PC was back to normal. The old one was a 425w PSU that i remember was pretty decent when I bought it. Had put in research and despite the relatively low wattage it was pretty decent. When it died though it was a good 2 years old.

The new one to replace it (2 months ago) was a pretty crappy one to be honest, so Im thinking this may have gone.

Regarding hard drives, I have tried booting with every combination of them, even without either of them plugged in this has no effect on booting up. Nothing comes up on screen at any point

[Swiftes]

Tried clearing the CMOS? You would be amazed at the problems it has solved for me..

[JordanWillis]

make sure you buy a good quality PSU in the future. This part is the one of those parts people normally cheap out on because it's not something directly related to performance. I would recommend either Corsair / Antec / Enermax for power supplies. Don't cheap out because you don't want a power supply crapping out on you and taking your whole system with it.