PSU Dying?.

[jon bda]

Right then peeps, been having some trouble with my PC, a couple of times of late its frozen on boot when detecting the IDE drives, a sure sign of it not picking up my slave 40gig Maxtor with the 80gig WD set to master. Last night i boot it up and it looks like my XP install on the 80gig is borked and corrupted...it'll boot so far and then restart, i had a bit off stuff on that drive that i hadn't had a chance to burn off so i dont want to format it just yet in the hope i can rescue some of it. Hunt around, find a 3gig drive and do a fresh install of XP on it...thing is, i notice when i'm installing, all the LED's on my baybus are flickering which i've never seen them doing before and with the side off my case, i notice it sounds as if the CPU or PSU fan is speeding up and slowing down on its own. Now the Enermax 350watt PSU in my PC is probably the oldest part in there along with my DVD drive (about 18 months/2 years) and i also managed to melt one of the floppy power connectors on it a few weeks back...do you think its finally packing up?. I'm using my kids PC for now as i don't want to risk any major damage to my PC if it is the PSU is faulty...

[acidrainy]

The XP thing happened to a friend of a friend....
It got as far as scandisc (in the GUI) and then rebooted.

The only thing I could come up with was to use his other OS or load up KNOPPIX (a bootable linux on cd )

As for the PSU, I'm not really sure, the only way to find out would be to swap in another one and see how this effects things...

[Trickle]

You should be able to investigate you hypothesis further by removing as much kit as possible and basically running:

a) the known to be working drive /w ram/gfx/mobo only (no babus, b0rked floppy, cdrom, 2nd HD: etc.

b) the questionable drive /w minimal ram/gfx only etc

...and seeing if anything behaves differently. Also, often mobo's are set to alter fan speed themselves. Some fans can regulate their speed themselves too without assistance from the mobo.

[BiggehXP]

i had a simialr problem in this pc, the bios would freeze while detecting the hdd, i cant remember what i did exactly, but i do remember taking out a dodgy fan and the dodgy OLD cd-rom drive!

[Behemoth]

Try taking a ew things off the PSU, jusr run with the 80 gig HDD, no fans, or other drives, just the PSU, then slowly introduce everything back again, if it starts crashing, then it's your PSU.

[garath]

had a similar problem but for me, it was a dud motherboard. it just decided to give up !!!

[Behemoth]

I thought I had a dodgy PSU, but it turned out to be a very unstable bios flash, stupid Abit board. Still I have a nice shiny Q-Tec instead of a no name Ebuyer PSU, so I guess thats something.

[Doctor.Bob]

Originally posted by jon bda
Right then peeps, been having some trouble with my PC, a couple of times of late its frozen on boot when detecting the IDE drives, a sure sign of it not picking up my slave 40gig Maxtor with the 80gig WD set to master. Last night i boot it up and it looks like my XP install on the 80gig is borked and corrupted...it'll boot so far and then restart, i had a bit off stuff on that drive that i hadn't had a chance to burn off so i dont want to format it just yet in the hope i can rescue some of it. Hunt around, find a 3gig drive and do a fresh install of XP on it...thing is, i notice when i'm installing, all the LED's on my baybus are flickering which i've never seen them doing before and with the side off my case, i notice it sounds as if the CPU or PSU fan is speeding up and slowing down on its own. Now the Enermax 350watt PSU in my PC is probably the oldest part in there along with my DVD drive (about 18 months/2 years) and i also managed to melt one of the floppy power connectors on it a few weeks back...do you think its finally packing up?. I'm using my kids PC for now as i don't want to risk any major damage to my PC if it is the PSU is faulty...

It may well be your PSU - I built a system for a mate 13 months ago & last week it started to behave in a very similar manner. Eventually it packed up completely. When I took it apart the PSU was dead & it had taken the mobo with it.

He's v. upset & I feel tremendously guilty coz I sold him the PSU

I've seen 3 Broken PSUs now & they all behave v. oddly.

Try a new PSU mate (How the devil are you btw?)

[jon bda]

Originally posted by Doctor.Bob
It may well be your PSU - I built a system for a mate 13 months ago & last week it started to behave in a very similar manner. Eventually it packed up completely. When I took it apart the PSU was dead & it had taken the mobo with it.

He's v. upset & I feel tremendously guilty coz I sold him the PSU

I've seen 3 Broken PSUs now & they all behave v. oddly.

Try a new PSU mate (How the devil are you btw?)

I'll be happier when my new PSU arrives...managed to pick up a secondhand Antec 430watt for a half decent price...and at least this PSU didn't take everything with it. Damn depressing being stuck on the kids PC though (blurgh, Duron 800/Win ME).

P.S. You found yourself a PSU yet?, i see your looking...

[Doctor.Bob]

Originally posted by jon bda

P.S. You found yourself a PSU yet?, i see your looking...

Looking for 2 - one to replace the one I felt obliged to give to my mate & another for a 2nd project.

Getting nowhere with 'em though.

[garath]

always thought it was a waste of money to splurge on a good psu, that was until my nameless one frm ebuyer blew up due to a voltage increase.

[Ozymandias]

A power supply that blows up has always been my nightmare so I've never gone for a cheap psu rather skimping on the case.

A friends psu went bad and blew up the motherboard but amazingly everything else was ok !

[jon bda]

Originally posted by Ozymandias
A power supply that blows up has always been my nightmare so I've never gone for a cheap psu rather skimping on the case.

A friends psu went bad and blew up the motherboard but amazingly everything else was ok !

This is the thing, when you add up how much moneys worth of kit a duff PSU could take out, £60/£80 for a quality one doesn't seem at all unreasonable...

[Byatt]

Originally posted by jon bda
This is the thing, when you add up how much moneys worth of kit a duff PSU could take out, £60/£80 for a quality one doesn't seem at all unreasonable...

as well as this, paying a little bit more saves you all the goddamn hassle of RMAing any PSU that breaks...which isn't cheap! £8 postage for a PSU going through parcelforce!