Comp turns on, then off right away

Z

Zyzzyvas

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Sep 1, 2004
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Was on my comp last night when all of a sudden the thing shuts itself off and then cycles on and off quickly about 5 or 6 times before I can get to the switch in the back to shut it off. Well I didn't feel like diagnosing it last night cause it was late.

Came home after work today and when I turned it on the fans all started to spin and the lights came on but then it shut itself down about a second later and wouldn't turn on again unless I turned the switch in the back off and on again.

I replaced the Thermaltake PSU with a cheap one I had sitting around to see if the PSU had died but the new one did the exact same thing. Checked all the cables and they are all connected properly. I'm pretty sure it's not a heat problem because I just did a fresh install a few days ago and have been watching the temps and they seem fine. What else could it be? Motherboard?
 
I had this problem once. Something is drawing way too much
power, probably a short. Mine turned out to be a cdrom drive
that was shorting out to the case. I'd suggest unplugging
the power from all drives and see if that's it.
 
No I just took out all the power to everything but the cpu fan and it did the same thing. :(
 
Zyzzyvas said:
No I just took out all the power to everything but the cpu fan and it did the same thing. :(
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Might be the mounting. Take out the motherboard and reinsert. Or take the board out onto a piece of plastic (anything) and fire it up (hopefully that won't be literally). :eek: On like my first computer build, I never read forums and such. I just though I could do it from looking at other computers and tried it. I ended up mounting it fucked up and it wouldn't turn and and I heard this loud noise and the lights dimmed. There was this flash from the back of the PSU. I thought the PSU blew up. I had to remount it because it was jacked. Anyway, I fired it up and it worked later on.. yes with the same PSU. It was pretty damn funny. I've been scared ever since of the same thing happening. Hvaen't had it happen again though and i've been quite a few systems since :)
 
This is the first computer i've built too, so I will try this. If it does turn out to be a problem with the mounting, what are some tips on how to mount it properly?
 
Ok I pulled it out of the case and it still did the same thing. My motherboard looks fine, is there any way I can tell if it's kicked the bucket?
 
You might want to try pulling everything off (including RAM) the motherboard but the cpu and cpu hsf. Make sure you have a speaker hooked up to the pc speaker jack (assuming your mobo doesn't have an onboard error speaker).

If you power it with the cpu and cpu fan only and you get beeps, then you know that you are good to that point. Power off and start putting things back one at a time and powering up. When is starts doing the power on - off - on thing again, the last part in is the bad one.

If you get no beeps when you power up with CPU only, then you probably have a bad motherboard.

This is a technique even advanced builders use when you just can't pin point the bad part.
 
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