Help0r !!!!

[Wij]

My PC has died

It tries to start up gets to the point where the CPU fan starts moving and then stops. It the retries a few seconds later. Keeps doing that until I switch power off. The case fan never starts at all. Nothing appears on the monitor at all. It never kicks it off standby. There are LEDs on all round inside though so the PSU hasn't blown. Can't rule out that it's no longer providing enough power though.

It was just doing a restart when it happened. I clicked restart in Ubuntu to get to Win7 to upload photos. Missed the deadline on GRUB due to inattention and ended up in Ubuntu again. Clicked restart again and this time it wouldn't get past the POST screen. Soft resets just left it sat at POST again. So I went for the power switch. When I tried to switch it on again I got the situation described above. Leaving it off for half an hour made no difference.

Anyone got any ideas? I'm far too skint for a new PC and I really don't have the time to mess about digging out old components to swap in and out.

I'm taking the family to the beach for the day to take my mind off it. Please have some great ideas when I get back chumz0rz !!!

 

[Jupitus]

Wij - when you left it 'off' for half an hour did you actually unplug it? If not, worth a try.

 

[Bob007]

Unplug and reconnect everything, might be a weak joint.

Unplug, disconnect parts, leave in the basics. ram, cpu, psu, vid card. try again. If it works, reconnect one at a time till it falls over.

Try removing all but 1 stick of ram if you have more then one. Try another piece of ram if it fails with "that" one in.

Get me some rock from the beach, sugar mmmm.

Reset bios.

After this you moving into parts swap out.

 

[Wazzerphuk]

Don't install stupid operating systems (no, not Win7).

 

[Wij]

UPDATE !!!1

I tried disconnecting stuff.

DVD drive made no difference.

Both HDs removed . It POSTed but no OS to go into.

Won't POST with the oldest HD in (XP and GRUB) but will POST with just the newest in (Win7 and Ubuntu but boot sector only loads Win7).

After setting all BIOS options back to default I even managed to get into Win7 but it resets itself after a minute.

Stuck the DVD drive back in and popped a Linux Puppy CD in. That boots fine and hasn't reset yet (I'm on it now.)

I'd have thought it was the old HD except for the fact that Win7 won't stay up. The PC resets, rather than blue-screens, so I'd guess it's not memory but either a struggling PSU or some weird mobo error.

Anyone agree or disagree ?

Gonna sleep on it and maybe order a big fuck-off PSU in the morning...

 

[Syri]

The blue screen is disabled by default in Windows 7. To enable it, do the following:
Go to System in the Control Panel (right clicking Computer and going to properties gets to the same point)
Select Advanced System Settings on the left of the System box
On the Advanced tab (should be the default when the new system properties box comes up) click the Settings button in the frame labelled "Startup and Recovery"
In the Startup and Recovery window, take the tick out of the box that says "Automatically Restart" in the System Failure section.
OK those boxes, and then next time you get a critical failure, you'll get the old trusty blue screen of death, instead of just restarting itself.

 

[Dukat]

When it booted on the Linux Puppy CD and stayed up did you have the hard drives connected? If so which ones?

If you've got a 'fresh' HDD laying around, or if someone else has one handy, try disconnecting both of yours and connect that one up - see if it makes any difference at all.

If its booting without the HDD's connected, and a 'fresh' HDD doesn't make any difference, I would be inclined to say it's a PSU issue.

If a fresh HDD does make a difference - even a small one - its more likely to be Mobo.

Not sure if you'll agree, but just trying to locate where the problem might be.

 

[Wij]

It had the Win7 HD in it when booted from CD. It didn't stay up though. Just a lot longer than Win7 did. That probably just muddies the waters though

Anyway, I ordered a big fuck-off PSU (850W, up from 450W.) Should be here tomorrow or Monday. Surviving with just a Linux laptop and the PS3 at the minute. I'm OK actually I'll see if that makes everything better. If not then I'll probably get a new mobo, cpu and mem combo for which I'd have wanted a new PSU anyway.

 

[Wij]

Update:

New PSU fitted and machine booted into Win7 first time. Not sure why it skipped GRUB yet :/

Will leave it running to check stability and CPU temps (I knocked the fan a few times )

 

[Wij]

Update:

It's definately stable now. Would probably overclock again if I tried (it ran for about a year overclocked and the refused to run on anything but failsafe defaults until this happened, probably a warning sign )

Lack of GRUB was just that the order of the HDs had changed when I was swapping the in and out. Ubuntu and Win7 both run fine now.

Both CPU cores are idling at about 40 C which is a little high imo with a Zalman on but it is fucking warm in this room at the minute. Haven't stressed them with anything huge but they got to 55 C after some moderate usage. They used to max out at 60 when they were sat at 100% for an hour and overclocked by almost 50%. Was quite a bit cooler in the room then though.