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| Thread ID: 39841 | 2003-11-19 08:11:00 | Help! the most horrible of problems... | Stormwarden (388) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 193124 | 2003-11-19 23:21:00 | I assume you have re-set button. Unplug this from the M/B - it could be faulty. Bye |
Peter H (220) | ||
| 193125 | 2003-11-19 23:28:00 | > I assume you have re-set button. Unplug this from the > M/B - it could be faulty. > Bye Or the power button isn't engaging correctly. Had this happen on one PC. Turned out the stem of the power switch was too long. Trimmed off 2mm and haven't had a problem since. |
mark.p (383) | ||
| 193126 | 2003-11-20 01:19:00 | Have a look on the MB there are usually a number of voltage regulator fitted. Next to them are larger size electrolytics usually circa. 2200uF. Do they bulge at the top? This could be the problem Careful if you change on double sided PCBs. Many substandard ones have been fitted on MBs in the last 12/18 months. Made in Taiwan. |
OldEric (3062) | ||
| 193127 | 2003-11-20 01:32:00 | Oh, also one more thing, while I check the ram, It often makes funny sounds before it resets - not "pc beep" style error codes but random blips and buzzes from the soundcard's speakers. Last night I tried to scan the hard drive for errors, it got part way, but then stuffed up making a lot of noise and there was considerable screen corruption - white dots being plastered all over the screen. This was at the "windows is checking your disk" light/dark blue screen. I checked the video card in a friends computer and it worked fine. |
Stormwarden (388) | ||
| 193128 | 2003-11-20 02:14:00 | Okay, the ram seems to be fine, unless both of my 256MB modules are equally faulty. Something I find hard to beleive. The problem still happens with the power and reset buttons unplugged (I use the button on the KB to turn it on) I have noticed that when it stuffs up, both the hard drive and the CD writer lights (if it's plugged in) light up continuously during the stuff-up, and stay that way until it resets or whatever - sometimes it is just freezing with a black screen now. This last time that it stuffed up it literally made a "crashing" sound, it was really startling, like some cheap movie sound effect, and then a wierd noise through the speakers afterwards, much the same as what you would get if you hooked up a computer fan in series with a speaker and turned the power on. I stopped all of the fans in the case one by one with my finger (I still have all of my fingers attached) to check if this was related to the noise, but no luck. |
Stormwarden (388) | ||
| 193129 | 2003-11-20 02:16:00 | Oh yeah, and I can't see anything obviously wrong with any of the capacitors around the CPU slot. They all look to be in good condition. | Stormwarden (388) | ||
| 193130 | 2003-11-20 02:30:00 | your unfortunatly not going to get the answer to your problem there are far to many possiabilities your gonna have to work through this systematically. When you get a problem like this the best thing to do is take the whole thing out of the case put it out on a nice clean workspace and only use the essentials. It is definatly a hardware problem so ignore windows this means u can probably get away with unplugging all drives HDD+CD+CD-RW+FDD. Is the mobo mounted using risers? it could be one of these is shorting and cause a reboot. Take everything out of the case and build a barebones system. Use mobo, CPU, ram, vid card, monitor, keyboard, mouse + u may need a HDD to check stabily but add this in later when u think you have fixed the prob. You say u've checked the ram so thats one thing eliminated. I'd be willing to put money on the PSU being faulty so that would be the first thing i would check can u borrow a PSU for a friend or something? | Pete O'Neil (250) | ||
| 193131 | 2003-11-20 02:50:00 | only connect power supply, ram, video card and mainboard/cpu. check all fans are going if there is one on video card/mainboard/cpu. load bios default in cmos. ----> test ram using memtest86, you can create a test disc in another computer, www.memtest86.com. ----> test with another power supply, in some bios/cmos you can check voltage level and temperature. I have seen symptoms like yours before, its the power supply got a intermittent problem, very hard to find out. ----> if still no luck, I would think mainboard and/or amd cpu stuffed |
yang11 (170) | ||
| 193132 | 2003-11-20 06:53:00 | Thanks for all the replies people, I think I have a (temporary, at least) fix for the problem. Would you beleive it, the top left pin of the atx connection for the motherboard was half stuffed - I pulled the big plug out and immediately noticed that that particular pin and it's little surrounding piece of plastic was charred black and broken in half - the other half was fused to the inside of the socket. The pin belonged to the 12V rail. So, in a sense, it was a problem with the power supply - the pin had severely overheated at some point (I could tell because of the obvious melted state of that small part of the plug and the fact that the solder on the back of the motherboard had melted and re-set, it was "foggy" while all of the other solder connections were still shiny). I guess that it overheated because the connection was bad in the first place, and trying to shove all that power from the 12V rail through it was too much. Anyway, I semi-solved the problem by clearing out the plastic mess and cleaning up the pin a bit and making the connection between the two tighter. I put my computer back together after some testing and it has been working fine to this moment. has anybody else ever had anything like this? Anyway, thanks for all the replies. Cheers |
Stormwarden (388) | ||
| 193133 | 2003-11-20 06:57:00 | Take that psu,chop the plugs off it so you wont be tempted to use it again and throw it away. | metla (154) | ||
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