Please help me before I kill myself....

M

MadFlava

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 23, 2000
Messages
428
Ive been fighting with my wife's PC now for several weeks and Im not any closer to figuring out what's wrong with it than I was when I started. Here's the deal.

When you power the box up, sometimes it posts, sometimes it doesnt. Sometimes you hit the power switch and it doesnt do anything. After it posts, it might boot into Windows okay for a minute then it just shuts down like you pulled the power. No matter what, if it powers up, it ALWAYS shuts down like you just yanked the cord. Either right after posting, halfway into Windows, whatever.

Here's what Ive replaced.

Ive tried 4 different power supplies
Replaced the mobo with a brand new unit
Replaced the graphics card
Replaced the case (I actually thought it might be a bad power switch)
Ive swapped the memory sticks in and out thinking I had a bad stick of memory. I guess that could still be the case but it seems farfetched to have 2 bad sticks of memory that cause the same problem.
Ive pulled everything out of the machine except for the CDR and one hard drive

Essentially, at this point, the only thing that hasnt been swapped is the memory and the CPU.

Im sick of throwing parts at this PC and I dont really know what else to do. Ive already spent way more on it than I would have prefered.. its a legacy box anyways (Socket 939) and I tried my best to talk the spousal unit into just buying a low end Dell but she's cheap and was having none of it.

Anyone got any advice other than trading in the spouse for a new one?
 
Remove everything from the case and run the motherboard on a cardboard box.

Or you could kill yourself. I'm sure that would fix it too.

Also, are you sure it's not overheating?
 
gwarren007 said:
what are the specs of the wifes machine?
Click to expand...

Its an Athlon 64 3700 with 2GB PC3200
Right now its in a MSI K8T Neo board I believe (The NForce 4 board) and it was in a Gigabyte K8NS Ultra (Nforce 3)

Far as overheating, I dont think so. Its got an OEM cooler on the processor and the fan is staying at a reasonable RPM level. I've tried enabling the overheating alarm to make sure Im not missing it overheating and it hasnt gone off.

I could take it out and boot it on a cardboard box but I dont see the difference in doing that and what Im doing now. Its stripped down to nothing and its been in 2 different cases with exactly the same results.

Im really leaning towards the processor being bad but Ive never seen one that caused this kind of flakiness.
 
BrinNutz said:
Have you reformatted at all?
Click to expand...

No.. Its not blue screening.. it's just shutting down.. it even does it before it boots into Windows. Sometimes you can hit the power button, the fans come on, the drives start to spin up and everything just shuts down. This is within 2-3 seconds of hitting the power button.

Usually when that happens, it wont power back up at all without killing the power to the system.

Suffice to say, Im relatively certain its not a Windows problem.
 
Weird..Well, how about you take the HDD to another system and boot it up into safe mode and see if it works?
 
It sounds exactly like bad caps in the power supply. I know you said you tried several, so that's probably not the case.

Have you tried taking out the harddrive and sticking it in another machine as a secondary drive and doing a full virus scan?
 
BigBadBiologist said:
It sounds exactly like bad caps in the power supply. I know you said you tried several, so that's probably not the case.

Have you tried taking out the harddrive and sticking it in another machine as a secondary drive and doing a full virus scan?
Click to expand...


I havent virus scanned the hard drive BUT I have booted the system from a Memtest86 CD trying to run a memory diagnostic on the memory and it also shuts down about 30 seconds into booting into Memtest.

It has a brand new power supply hooked up to it now (Came with the case I swapped it into) and Ive tried some high end power supplies in there that I had left over from my previous system. My wife usually gets my hand me downs so all the stuff Im struggling with used to be my main system.
 
You did put thermal paste on the CPU when you put the fan on it right?
 
BrinNutz said:
You did put thermal paste on the CPU when you put the fan on it right?
Click to expand...


Heh.. yea.. Artic Silver.. same stuff I been using for years.

Im really stumped by this one. Ive had the absolute worst run of luck with PCs over the last 4 weeks or so.. my file server puked on me, then my wife's PC then one of my RAID drives failed. Its been a rough month.
 
Have you tried plugging it into a different circuit in the house? Considering the number of problems you've had lately I would wonder if the power going into your house isn't very good. If you do get this sorted out I would definitely look into getting some line conditioners or something similar. I'm not talking about surge protectors, but line conditioners that actually make sure the power going into the systems is good.

Also, taking the system out of a case will eliminate any problems from grounding caused by the case. I know you said you used two different cases, but that doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot. Taking the system completely out of the case is one of the first steps in troubleshooting.

One more thing, disconnect everything but the bare essentials. Motherboard, 1 stick of RAM, CPU and heatsink, video card, keyboard and monitor alone. Yes, I have had hard drives cause lockups for no reason and I've had a DVDROM that went bad which would stop the computer from booting. That was even with the power cable disconnected from the DVD ROM but the IDE cable still connected. Don't ask because I can't explain it, it's just happened. The hard drive I actually had trouble with works fine in another machine. It's just that it would make one of my machines lock up when it was in there.

 
The system is on a UPS. Id assume that by being on a UPS the power would be good since it's supplied by the battery. Is that incorrect?

Far as the grounding issues, I might give that a try. Keep in mind tho, that the system has been thought 2 motherboards AND 2 cases and does the EXACT same thing.

Ill pull the drives now and boot it into BIOS and let it sit and see if it powers down again.
 
This is a tough one. You've tried many things, but maybe something got missed? I'm thinking that since you used 2 mobos and 2 cases, then it is likely that those are not the problems. What DID you use in both cases? Same CD drive? Not really sure if that makes sense, but since you are still having problems after all that swapping, I can't help but think that the problem is coming from a peice of hardware that is being used in all builds.
 
i had somehwhat of the same problem doing a socket 478 build about 4 years ago. turns out the processor wasnt correctly seated in the motherboard. maybe check that but im pretty sure thats not your problem cause it actually booted up a couple of times
 
without reading through all the posts. Have you pulled the board out of the case and just plug in video / power / and keyboard?

The motherboard could be grounding out against the case.
 
MadFlava said:
The system is on a UPS. Id assume that by being on a UPS the power would be good since it's supplied by the battery. Is that incorrect?

Far as the grounding issues, I might give that a try. Keep in mind tho, that the system has been thought 2 motherboards AND 2 cases and does the EXACT same thing.

Ill pull the drives now and boot it into BIOS and let it sit and see if it powers down again.
Click to expand...

Verdict?
 
MadFlava said:
The system is on a UPS. Id assume that by being on a UPS the power would be good since it's supplied by the battery. Is that incorrect?

Far as the grounding issues, I might give that a try. Keep in mind tho, that the system has been thought 2 motherboards AND 2 cases and does the EXACT same thing.

Ill pull the drives now and boot it into BIOS and let it sit and see if it powers down again.
Click to expand...

Just because it's on a UPS doesn't mean anything. It all depends on the UPS you have. And no, it's not likely the system is getting it's power from the battery. More than likely the system is getting it's power through a pass through and will only switch to the battery when the AC power goes out.

Also, most of your cheaper UPSs do not have any type of power filtering or if they do, it's not really worth the sticker used to indicate it has it. Having a UPS does not guarantee good power. Using a quality UPS with a quality power filter among a couple of other things will help keeping good power to the system.

You still need to pull all components from the case and do not hook up any drives and then test it that way. This is something which should have been done long before buying any new components.

 
An update... Im really no farther along than I was yesterday. I let the PC sit in the BIOS all night with the DVDRW and hard drive hooked up and it stayed on all night long. So, I sat down and put the wireless card back in it and rebooted it and everything was okay.

Booted the PC up and got to the Windows screen and realized I didnt have the antenea on the wireless card. Went to screw it on, PC powered off. Pulled the wireless card back out, rebooted the PC and got into Windows, realized I was missing drivers for the mobo, opened the DVD drive, put in a CD, closed it and when the drive snapped shut, the PC shut down.

I've noticed some real wierdness with this PC. You can wiggle cables and it powers down, tap the side of the PC and it powers down, bump against the case and it powers down, etc. It's done this across 2 cases and 2 motherboards tho.

So at this point, it does seem like a ground issue or lack there of. Im going to move the PC to another room and power it up and see if it does the same thing. If it does, I guess Ill pull the components out. If the board is grounding out, Im not really sure how to fix it. Its assembled like every other PC Ive built in the last 15 years, its been in 2 cases AND it worked fine for a while and this just started happening out of the blue with the old case and the old mobo. For 6 months or so, it was fine.

Something else that is odd is that the mobo loses the BIOS settings constantly. I thought the CMOS battery was dead initially but I just replaced it and it's still doing the same thing. Every time it powers down by itself, it loses the CMOS settings.
 
Probably a long shot given all the symptoms described, but have you underclocked the memory and CPU? Some motherboards can be finicky about the components used and this may help narrow down where to look.
 
Did you try pulling your motherboard and power supply from the case like fluidimagery suggested? You can leave the optical and hard drives in the case. Try hooking everything up and see if you still have issues. It could very well be that it is shorting out against the case as mentioned.
 
fluidimagery said:
without reading through all the posts. Have you pulled the board out of the case and just plug in video / power / and keyboard?

The motherboard could be grounding out against the case.
Click to expand...

Yeah I was thinking maybe a motherboard metal mounting post has been put in the wrong place and is shorting.
Its definitely worth getting it going outside the case to remove any doubt.

Try plugging in the bare minimum to see if it helps get to windows and remain stable.
ie gfx card, hard drive, cpu, 1 ram stick.
We can work from there if some headway is made.

Just in case the UPS has a fault, try connecting directly to the mains.
 
Okay.. its out of the case and still doing the same thing. This is with the mobo, graphic card, PSU, 1 HD, the DVDRW and 2 sticks of memory installed. Im going to pull it down to 1 stick of mem and 1 HD and see what happens.
 
Try a different power cord as well. I have seen them go bad. They are rare, but at this point, try using a different one from the power supply to the wall. Who knows at this point.
 
You really need to find a way to test your memory.... do you have another machine you could use to run memtest on your memory? If so, four hours minimum, and test each stick individually....
 
bigredcat said:
Try a different power cord as well. I have seen them go bad. They are rare, but at this point, try using a different one from the power supply to the wall. Who knows at this point.
Click to expand...

Did that.. Im even running the PC from power in another room.

Im really at a loss.. every time I think I have an idea of the problem, something happens that sends me in a different direction.

photo.jpg


photo1.jpg


photo2.jpg
 
digital_exhaust said:
You really need to find a way to test your memory.... do you have another machine you could use to run memtest on your memory? If so, four hours minimum, and test each stick individually....
Click to expand...

I dont have another machine that will run PC3200, unfortunately. Ive swapped back and forth between sticks tho.. I guess both could be bad but that seems like it's really reaching but at this point, Im not ruling anything out.
 
Wait, you said it sat in BIOS overnight, should be able to run memtest then right??
 
BrinNutz said:
Wait, you said it sat in BIOS overnight, should be able to run memtest then right??
Click to expand...

Ive tried running Memtest several times. It runs for a few minutes then just shuts down like it does every other time you try to do anything with it.
 
MadFlava said:
Ive tried running Memtest several times. It runs for a few minutes then just shuts down like it does every other time you try to do anything with it.
Click to expand...

That's one of the reasons I'm thinking bad memory is what's giving you fits... It might be worth it to try and pick up a new stick and see if that does it for you.... You have performed all the tests that I can think of... and I really hate recommending throwing new parts in a machine hoping you get lucky... but honestly, I can't think of a thing other than memory that could be causing your problems, except perhaps a flaky video card, but I doubt that's the problem....
 
Yea, there is a chance that both sticks are bad...would definitely suck, but it has happened...
 
I scrounged up a stick of PC2700 that will boot the mobo up so Im running Memtest on that now. If the system shuts off at this point, Im going to replace the proccessor. EVERYTHING else has been replaced. Right now its stripped down to 1 stick of mem, a completely different optical drive AND cable and an AGP card. So if it fails now, the only common factor is the CPU.
 
Time for new 'puter? LOL

There's the beast!! crazy possessed PC...Run, run far far away
 
I went through something much like this for a neighbors kids machine.

Turns out it was the processor....:(

Good luck.......:cool:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top