Mystery Powerdowns

[Champman99]

Hi,

I've been called in to look at a friends PC which is having a problem. Essentially very soon after booting windows (vista) it completely turns itself off.

Its an Old Socket A athlon with integrated graphics btw!

Here's the things I've already tried.

The power switch was getting stuck down, or seemed to be. I wired the reset switch up as the power switch. This actually seemed to have solved it (stayed on for far longer than it had been, 90 mins or so) and just as I was popping the figurative champagne it turned itself off.

PSU is of course the first thing that jumps to mind. Theres is a 500W EZCool unit. I have tried with two of my own (an Enermax Infini 620W and a Hiper 580W) and the problem was still there.

Overheating, the CPU temp reported in bios is nice and low (29 degrees) and the CPU fan (stock) looks to be in good working order.

Software - It seems like the PC will stay on as long as you like if you are just messing about in the BIOS. I'm just about to go over there with an Ubuntu Live CD and see if that will be OK. Which I suppose would suggest some sort of Windows issue (or maybe hard drive?).

The hard drive seems OK. I gave them my Sharkoon QuickPort thing so they could pull their files etc onto a laptop and that worked fine.

Obviously its getting to the point were i advise new "insides" for the PC using their existing hard drive - but I would love to actually find the source first! If you've got any ideas, then I'd love to hear them. Cheers

[blueball]

Could be the motherboard. Any of the capacitors showing signs of bulging on top?

[Champman99]

Hi, thanks for the suggestion. Obviously I'm hoping its not the motherboard in terms of cost for them because probably that would mean the best solution is a new system, or at least new core components. The capacitors all look fine but I'm no electronics expert.\

I'm actually typing this from their machine booted into Ubuntu live. Everything seems fine with this so I suppose that suggests an issue with windows. It could (I suppose still have something to do with the hard drive, irregular power draw maybe?) but I still have the HD plugged in and can access the files from this Ubuntu Live System.

I suppose I will have to do a reformat / windows install. I was hoping to avoid that too as it always seems the case that no matter how many times I ask someone to make SURE they have everything backed up somewhere. They always forget something.

[blueball]

What operating system is it? If it is XP you could try a "deep" repair rather than wiping it but you would need a CD with the correct service pack level to do it (ie an XP SP3 CD if the PC has XP SP3 installed just now)

1. Boot the system from the WinXP CD. Have your CDKEY ready.
2. Select the “Install” option. (Don't select repair! The first repair option only verifies XP files against the XP CD versions and makes no system setting changes).
3. Setup will find the XP install that is already there and ask if you wish to repair it. Say yes.
4. Setup will run the upgrade code that will re-enumerate the hardware and set itself to boot from the new controller.
5. Install any newer drivers as needed.