Help me diagnose this hardware problem...

Quimbly · Post by **Quimbly** » October 11th, 2005, 6:09 pm

Hi gang, My PC died last night. The power cut out while I was playing a game, and it won't reboot. I tried all the obvious things: cord, connections, powerbar, etc. Powerbar has power and peripherals have juice. The front LEDs (hard drive, power, etc.) aren't lit. Upon opening the case, however, there is a lit LED on the motherboard. So, I'm thinking this is either a bad power supply or a bad motherboard. Anyone have any ideas on what the problems is (with an explanation why) and/or some advice? Thank you!

richh0323 · Post by **richh0323** » October 12th, 2005, 12:18 am

The power supply is broken up in several parts, you have power for fans, hard drives, motherboard, and a standby power, that is on 100% of the time. I would tend to think the problem will be power supply related, I would try a replacement supply first. Cheeper to try and you can return it if not. I would also try unplugging all hard drives, fans, case lights, and try to boot. This will eleminate them from the problem chain.

kunkle31 · Post by **kunkle31** » October 14th, 2005, 1:08 pm

Hello, Similar problem to the OP above. My wife's computer has been having issues with starting up lately and could be fixed by unplugging it and putting it into another socket and it would start up. However now when you push the power button, lights light up, fans start.......but then 1-2 seconds later (sometimes less) it shuts off. Not long enough for the monitor to click on. I had the company send me out a replacement power supply, replaced it and still the same thing. I always worry if I plugged it in correctly, but the power standby LED is on on the MB so I would think it would at least do something? So, I am just about to return the MB, but I want to make sure that there isnt any other troubleshooting I should do before I disable everything. Thanks EDIT OK, searching through some other posts, I am trying to disconnect everything AND the MB and see if I get anything and I DONT. The power button on the front seems connected to the MB? Without the power to the MB, how do I even try to turn it on to see if it works? And, is there a way to make sure the new PSU works outside of the computer?

richh0323 · Post by **richh0323** » October 15th, 2005, 1:37 pm

You may have a bad power cord or recipticale, if you can get to work by un-plugging it and replugging it somewhere else.

EDIT OK, searching through some other posts, I am trying to disconnect everything AND the MB and see if I get anything and I DONT. The power button on the front seems connected to the MB? Without the power to the MB, how do I even try to turn it on to see if it works? And, is there a way to make sure the new PSU works outside of the computer?

You have to have the connectors to the motherboard connected, just dissconnect suff like fans, disk drives,hard drives, case lights. The objective is to find out if something is drawing down the power supply. With the above un connected, you should be able to boot to the piont where you get a BIOS screen on the display.

picket · Post by **picket** » October 16th, 2005, 6:46 am

im having a prob also along those lines. i play games alot online and they used to crash every so often and winxp says its a graphics driver. so 1 day i downloadd a driver update from the company site and it workd great for awhile. after about a week my comp startd rebooting during a game....then it startd rebooting as soon as i tried to start a game(online or off).....then my comp startd rebooting somewhere during the winxp loading, and thats as far as i can get. ive tried new graphics cards, new harddrives with a different OS, ive unpluggd everything but the graphics card on 1 of the reboots i got an error checksum error loading default bios or something like that.....and i was gonna reflash but does any1 think it could be the power supply? gigabyte ga-7vt600-l mobo amd 2000xp cpu 1gig pc2700 ddr 256mb radeon 9600

richh0323 · Post by **richh0323** » October 16th, 2005, 1:36 pm

Can you get to the BIOS? If so reset it to default values. Try removig one stick of ram see if you can reboot normally. Go into the BIOS and go to the PC health, check you're voltages there. You say you play alot of games, did you O/C, if so how much. Make sure the graphics card is AGP 4X/8X (1.5v notch) the 2X (3.3v notch) isn't supported and will crash the system. When you changed the card to check was it compatable to the above standard? IS this a dual BIOS model, if so the backup will reflash the main if you have a problem. You can use the Q flash, make sure you know what you're doing, best to use easy tune in Windows mode. If you can't even get to the BIOS with out ram installed it maybe a bad P/S