The hard problems to find

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by twizzle, Jul 13, 2009.

  1. twizzle

    twizzle Gigabyte Poster

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    A nieghbour of mine has asked me to look at her pc. "yes its a computer" i said....

    Now seriuosly, her pc has one of those most annoying faults, its intermittent! Sometime when she tuns it on its just flashes on teh pwoer led then stays off. butthi shappnes only once ina blue moon. If she turns it on again staright after it allworks.
    I've hd it for 1 night and i've managed to get it to do this only once so far. This leads me to suspect either PSU or motherboard/chip issue. It could also possibly be teh switch in the case but i'm leaving that as and option for later. So far all i've done is disconnect her 2 dvd drives and 1 harddrive and teh fault hasnt happend yet. But as i said its intermittent. Last night i must have turned it on and off 30 times and it only faulted once. So do i keep turning it on and off untill it happens or do i say it hasnthappned now so plug stuff back in 1 at time until it does fault if it does?
    I wondered if it was teh PSu struggling to pwoer everything up at once, its only a 400w psu powering a Gigabyte GAk8m800m (?) mobo, athlon 64, 1gb ram, 2 dvd drives and 1 hdd, only teh cpu fan is fitted no others. But 400w shoul dbe enough for all this?
    Don't know if its relted but apparently it also shutsdown and restarts while in use. Again its random and it dosent power off just reboots, no erros showing when it starts windows again (and ist XP SP2).

    Any suggestions?
     
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  2. greenbrucelee
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    greenbrucelee Zettabyte Poster

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    I would think the PSU may be on it's way out but as nother option have you checked all the connectors like the Molex connectors and ATX lead?

    get a multi meter and with the ATX cable still plugged in put the multimeters probes in the positive and negative bits on the ATX lead and see if it returns proper voltage.

    If it does try it on the 4/6 pin connector if it has one and see if that gives a reading

    There is a app that will show you your voltages for free but for the life of me I can't remember what it is called although these apps are never bang on so your better with a multimeter

    I had this issue once with a crap PSU I had.
     
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  3. redstar

    redstar Bit Poster

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    Twizzle i've had this happen twice before to me on my own desktop pc's.

    The first time it i would power up and.....nothing, no image on the screen.The power led would show though and all fans would be runnning ect. Next time i switched it on it was running ok.
    I track this down to a faulty graphics card and once replaced it worked perfect.

    The second time i had a pc that kept restarting intermittently. It didn't matter what i was doing and there was no specific thing that would make it do it.
    This turned out to be the power supply and once replace this system worked perfect too.

    So my suggestions are either swapping over the gfx card or power supply (if you have spares) with a know good working one and test it from there.

    Mind and check the other things that GBL has mentioned.

    Let us know how you go.
     
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  4. BosonMichael
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    BosonMichael Yottabyte Poster

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    400w should be enough... if the PSU isn't poo. That's why I always recommend buying a PSU from a trusted manufacturer. PSU problems are among the hardest to diagnose.

    Make sure to check it's not a heat/ventilation issue... those can cause intermittent problems as well.
     
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  5. leosdelsol

    leosdelsol Banned

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    id maybe check the thermal paste between processer and mobo.
     
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  6. twizzle

    twizzle Gigabyte Poster

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    The Graphics is allonboard on that mobo so i dontt hink thats a problem. When it fails to start the fan on cpu dont even turn nor does the LED stay on.

    GBL, first thing i checked was all the connectors. At first i thought teh lead in teh back was loose but it still happned after i'd pushed that in a bit more.

    BM, i dontthink its a heat/ Ventialtion issue as teh case is fairly empty inside and it happens even when the pc has been off for ages so no time for heat to build up.

    I'm still guessing at PSU, but teh problem is so intermittent and random its hard to diagnose. I need it to do it again at least twice then swap PSUs out. (it is a cheap no name one thats fitted)
     
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  7. Evilwheato

    Evilwheato Kilobyte Poster

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    Best thing is to replace the PSU, see where that gets you :)
     
  8. BosonMichael
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    BosonMichael Yottabyte Poster

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    ...but if the HSF has failed, it'll have issues, sometimes quite soon after boot-up. Just sayin' that it's something that needs to be checked. I assume you've already ensured that it was spinning, but if I were to not say anything, that would almost certainly be the problem! ;)
     
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  9. twizzle

    twizzle Gigabyte Poster

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    yep one of teh first thing i checked was the seating of the heatsink and the fan turning. I only managed to get it to fault once on start up and that was with the side off the case so heating shouldnt be the issue. However i have disconnected all drives and cant get it to re-fault no matter how many times i turn it on and off. Have reconnected everything and still no fault. Ran a Bootable AV scan, Spybot and HDD checks nothing showed up.
    I cant seem to get it to refault, and i'm concerend about turning it on and off so many times.
     
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  10. Bluerinse
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    Bluerinse Exabyte Poster

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    It could also be a faulty MOBO, have you at least visually checked the capacitors for signs of bulging and leaking?
     
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  11. Sparky
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    Sparky Zettabyte Poster Moderator

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    Try and configure the PC to show the BSOD when this happens as by default the PC will reboot to protect the PC.

    If it does BSOD then get the error message and see if that helps. Also check the event logs for the day it has rebooted.
     
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  12. twizzle

    twizzle Gigabyte Poster

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    Being a gigabyte board it was one of the first things i checked but couldnt see any.
    Funnily enough just switched it and off again a few times and it failed to start once. Looks liek its every 50 or so times! This doesnt make it any easier.
     
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