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Computer has become problematic

C

Cavermike

Gawd
Joined
Jan 3, 2002
Messages
644
My computer has been behaving really funny lately. The other day when I booted it up I noticed that my clock speed had changed down to 1800+. I went back in the bios and changed the settings back (thinking my 2-year-old daughter had somehow changed the settings.) Now the computer won't boot up. I hit the reset button and the settings are yet again different so then I thought it was my mainboard battery. Changed it, still nothing. I eventually got to my OS boot menu, but it wouldn't load anything. I'm really lost with this one. One of my problems is I don't have any new components to test on the mainboard.

Any help is greatly appreciated. See sig for specs.
 
Your mobo could be resetting your CPU speed due to high temperatures. Check to make sure your heatsink is properly seated on the CPU and that all the fans in your system are working properly.
 
I'm not getting any warning signals from a hot cpu. The problem occurs even if the computer has been shut off for a day and then started up. I do have a bearing going bad in a case fan, but there are 2 more fans so ventilation is still ok.
 
I am no expert but sounds like your power supply. Try a new one and see if it fixes it.
 
yeah i third that. i'm not expert but if the ps is overvolting your cpu it could cause it to overheat fast. and this isn't something you wanna take your take experimenting with. one time i had a power supply causing all sorts of instability. then it would boot but not get all the way to load windows and shut down. then come to find out the motherboard power connector was melted to the motherboard by that time :(. could of caught my house on fire :(

not sure what you got but NEVER EVER EVER go cheap on a power supply. Make sure you get a brand with a good reputation (pc power and cooling, fortron, sparkle, etc.) and enough watts.

Sorry for the speech but the whole incident was an eye opener for me.

also sorry for bad grammer and punctuation. i'm lazy :)
 
Ok, thought it might be the PSU too, so my new one came in today. I'm still having problems. One of the things I now notice is my bios doesn't seem right. When I change the clock multiplier and the FSB freq to the right settings and the computer flashes them into the memory, the settings don't change. If I'm able to get it stable enough to boot into Windows I notice I've lost all my sound, if the computer doesn't reboot on its own, or My mouse quits all of a sudden.

I'm starting to wonder if something has not gone wrong with the mainboard. As always, any help is greatly appreciated.
 
what kind of motherboard is it.my old Abit KT-7 Non Raid was acting funny right before i planned on upgrading it.
 
my ECS board (on my d/l machine...hey it was free!!!) does this same thing.

I think its either my CMOS going bad or my craptastic PSU on it.

 
Cavermike said:
Ok, thought it might be the PSU too, so my new one came in today. I'm still having problems. One of the things I now notice is my bios doesn't seem right. When I change the clock multiplier and the FSB freq to the right settings and the computer flashes them into the memory, the settings don't change. If I'm able to get it stable enough to boot into Windows I notice I've lost all my sound, if the computer doesn't reboot on its own, or My mouse quits all of a sudden.

I'm starting to wonder if something has not gone wrong with the mainboard. As always, any help is greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...

Probably mobo if I had to guess. Also CPU's that are starting to fail could cause this issue. Failing memory could also result in CMOS Checksum errors that load defaults. Which would definatley affect sound if your using onboard, or even if your not, the IRQ table can get reset causing all your devices to show up using different resources. Sometimes Windows won't properly reload drivers for a device when that happens.

If you've got more than one stick of memory try removing one stick at a time and do some testing.
 
Upon further inspection I have found some blown capacitors on the mb. Some people have pointed me to some articles about this being a problem in the mb industry.
 
Cavermike said:
Upon further inspection I have found some blown capacitors on the mb. Some people have pointed me to some articles about this being a problem in the mb industry.
Click to expand...

Certainly true. Some motherboards were built a couple years back with some crappy capacitors from Taiwan. There were and still are some class action lawsuits concerning the use of those cheap capacitors. EpoX is one of the manufacturers that used such capacitors. I've seen many EpoX boards from that model line and era die from the same failure.

That would certainly be the point of failure. Time for a new mobo.
 
Well I ordered a new motherboard to replace the one with the blown capacitors. I decided to bench test this since I am having so much trouble. Well, still having problems. I stripped everything down to mem and cpu and my setup turns off after about 10 seconds. The new mobo is an Epox 8RDA+ Pro. I then decided to swap the memory but still the same results. I then took out the processor (AMD Athlon XP 2400+) and it does not shut off. Does this mean I've fried the processor as well? Thanks again for helping a guy out.
 
To be honest I doubt it. I wouldn't worry about it until you put it in your new board, if it doesn't work then you know something is wrong...

My best guess is that when there is no CPU in the socket there is no load on the circuits that those Caps blew on. But i'm no electrical/electronics engineer. Best guess.
 
Cavermike said:
I then took out the processor (AMD Athlon XP 2400+) and it does not shut off. Does this mean I've fried the processor as well? Thanks again for helping a guy out.
Click to expand...

Took out the cpu as in replaced it or your running it without a CPU?

If your running without a CPU, then the monitor should be black but the fans will keep spinning... thats normal (why, I have no idea).

Now, if your running without a CPU and you have an image on the monitor... Thats just freaky.

If you replaced the CPU and it no longer shuts down and works properly... then the cpu might be gone, as well.
 
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