Older machine - difficulty powering on

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RanceJustice

Supreme [H]ardness
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Jun 9, 2003
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Hey guys. Recently my father's machine, an old compaq, has been having some issues. Everything was working fine; we even got HalfLife2 to run as I upgraded his machine with an ol d GeForce 4 TI 4600. Recently however, after trying to play HL2 and other games, his monitor would flicker and turn off - just...crash. The computer would not restart in normal mode, but could be started in safemode. After one start in safemode, it would reboot normally. However, recently things have been getting worse

I tried running memtest - it came up fine. I tried reinstalling the Nvidia drivers - no change. Now it will only boot to safemode, and sometimes not even that. Note that no software changes have taken place during this period of time.

I'm thinking either the video card or powersupply have begun to go downhill. Any suggestions?
 
Check for heat issues. Something may be getting too hot. It could also bossible be a power supply. Make sure all the fans are spinning and put your hand in the case while its running (Don't touch anything, just get close enough to the heatsinks to feel for excessive heat. I am not sure if MBM or Speedfan will putt the temps on a compaq motherboard, but it might be worth a try.

I am leaning toward heat issues because of the timing of the problems. Games stress a computer pretty good and they could be causing it to overheat.
 
What are the system specs and what is the current PSU?
 
It is a compaq OEM. 1.7ghz P4a, compaq motherboard (oddly enough, with 3 memory slots. Only 2 of which work), 256+512(512 stick added recently) SDRAM Pc133, GeForce 4 Ti 4600, DVD-ROM, CD-RW, PSU is whatever compaq threw in there (ie, likely crap?).

I'll try and check the caps - so far nothing I'm looking at is a glaring error.
 
Whats the true capacity of your power supply? What I mean by that is not whats written on the side like "400W" I mean what are the amperage (A) specs for each voltage on the side of the power supply for:
3.3V = ?A
+5V =?A
+12V =?A
+5VSB =?A

Those older machines are a little light in the power supply department sometimes...And I second the bad caps...

MD
 
250w max,

3.3V = 17A
+5V = 11A
+12V = 5
+5VSB = not existant.
+5.05VAux = 1.7
 
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