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Brother's Computer is Flaky

E

EnderW

[H]F Junkie
2FA
Joined
Sep 25, 2003
Messages
11,461
My brother has been having some weird problems with his computer. First the PS/2 ports wouldn't work half the time after being unhooked and he was getting random restarts. So we RMAed his board, replaced the Antec Smart Power 350 with a True Power 380, and put all this in a new case.

Everything seemed to be working OK at first. A few days ago he tried to put a new northbridge cooler on it, but the mounting clips didn't work with his motherboard and he had to rig some up himself. It looked like it was working OK, but when he turned it on, the comp would shut off after a few minutes. Found out he hadn't latched his cpu hsf down so the processor was shutting off. So we did that and it was working OK. Well today the replacement northbridge cooler came and we put that on, but when we tried to turn the compuer back on, it was dead. MB would light up, but wouldn't start. So we hooked up the old PSU right quick with the same results.

So he starting playing around with it and it powered up, but he had to hold the power button down for 30 seconds. And the keyboard wouldn't work. Then he couldn't shut it off and had to switch off the PSU to shut it off. So he cleard CMOS, checked connections, etc then he hooked everything back up and tried it again, this time it came on, but as soon as the hard drives started to spin up, off it goes. And that's what it does now.

I don't think it's the PSU since we just got this True Power and everything was working pretty good until today, plus it did the same exact thing with the Smart Power. I don't think we damaged anything putting the new cooler on. I am wondering if maybe the cpu is screwed up from all the times it had to shutoff when he didn't have the HSF on right. Or maybe we just got another bad board - RMA boards always feel kinda second-rate to me.

Right now I'm going to RMA the MB again, and probably switch to an Intel board. If he's still having problems with that, I can swap in my 2.8C to see if it's the processor.

Any other ideas?

System Specs:

Abit AI7
2.6C
Antec True Power 380
2 x 256MB Crucial PC3200
ATI AIW9600 Pro
WD800JB and WD100
Lite-On CD-RW
 
it would not turn on with out playing wiht the power switch, and then it would not turn of correctly. If i were you i would disconnect the power switch and with everthing still the way it is, quickly pop a jumper on the power switch header and remove it. If that works fine, repeat to shut it down. If this works, its just a bad power switch in the case.

Also, be very carefull/slow etc when working on computers, it sounds like a rush is what probibly got you into the mess if you do in fact have processor/board damage. IIRC the thermal shut down on cpu's is to protect them from fans failing, (wich provide a slow temp increase) as opposed to incorrect seating wich will cause a very fast spike in cpu temp
 
Update:

He took the northbridge cooler completely off and it worked fine - ran for about an hour. After replacing the cooler, it kept shutting off and the cooler was very hot to the touch. Now it won't even turn on, so something is fried somewhere. Anyway we're going to just RMA the board (again) and sell the replacement, because this board has given us nothing but problems. Will replace it with an Intel D865PERL - should be fine for him b/c he isn't overclocking.
 
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