| Forum Home | ||||
| Press F1 | ||||
| Thread ID: 128164 | 2012-12-04 05:47:00 | This PC keeps just powering off. No warning. Done it since new 6yrs ago. | straka01 (310) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 1316320 | 2012-12-04 05:47:00 | This PC was built for me by a TradeMe trader some 6 yrs ago. Ever since I loaded the OS it's had this problem I can't seem to solve. It just turns off. No warning at all. Does it randomly too. Last night I set it doing an Avast 'boot-time' scan - ran all night & was going fine when I got up. Then i started to use it & check stuff online - it just turned off. I waited then rebooted it & all went OK. There seems no rhyme or reason why it powers off. It gives no warning - just like there's a power cut (but there isn't). 1. Could it be software driven? 2. Could it be a CMOS setting? 3. Could it be a faulty Power Supply? 4. Could it be a trojan or virus? (I've scanned everything to 'death') 5. Could it be triggered by inactivity or something else? Some days, it goes all day without powering off, then other days it does it 3 or 4 times. I've reloaded the OS (repaired it & reinstalled it many times over the last 6 years) - no change. I've even loaded the OS on another partition & left the old OS derelict (unused). No change in the behaviour. It now boots to F drive & C drive is unused - no change - it still powers off randomly. Has anyone come across this problem before? |
straka01 (310) | ||
| 1316321 | 2012-12-04 06:47:00 | Could be overheating - not proper installation of fan/thermal compound. Check the temperature by downloading Speccy - www.google.co.nz oad&ei=X5q9UJWdGKWwiQeJy4CADA&usg=AFQjCNFwIvGjUbiZD0e9df-ytD8lQC3JGw&sig2=iKWvlItyalhPq1dTouk0ig | sahilcc7 (15483) | ||
| 1316322 | 2012-12-04 07:32:00 | heat (as above), psu or motherboard imo. | icow (15313) | ||
| 1316323 | 2012-12-04 07:47:00 | To power off suddenly without shutting down generally is not a software issue which is more likely to cause a sudden reboot, lockup, crash, or shutdown properly. It's not impossible but it's unlikely. More likely is a hardware issue like overheating as Sahilcc7 suggested or a faulty PSU as you mentioned. I've also seen issues like that when there is a compatibilty problem between two pieces of otherwise faultless hardware - in my case a motherboard and graphics card that would not work properly together but would both work fine with other hardware. Start with the temperatures, if that goes nowhere try a Memtest and see if you can borrow a PSU from somewhere to try. The biggest problem with diagnosing a single machine is no parts to swap around. It may sound like a cop out to some but simply doing a bit of trial and error swapping parts around can prove a fault much more quickly and conclusively than days worth of diagnostics and testing and because it takes less time is also the cheapest way to do it. Other things you can try are: updating to the latest BIOS and drivers for everything, removing any unecessary hardware, checking all the connections are secure inside the case and there are no stray bits of metal anywhere or shorts between the motherboard and case. If you have more than one stick of RAM try removing all but one at a time. |
dugimodo (138) | ||
| 1316324 | 2012-12-04 09:33:00 | PSU might be overloaded too, coming from TradeMe who knows what they used. | Agent_24 (57) | ||
| 1316325 | 2012-12-04 09:34:00 | Sounds like it was never stress tested by the place who built it, if it is hardware, it should have been picked up. Im wondering why you have put up with it for 6 years before trying to fix it. From the symptoms described, it could be a number of things, but yeah, as suggested, start with checking memory and PSU. If not those, I would suspect a faulty motherboard. Good luck, hope you get it sorted, it must do your head in dealing with it all this time. |
Iantech (16386) | ||
| 1316326 | 2012-12-04 09:59:00 | I'll second a power supply / issue, or overheating CPU / motherboard. Quickest way to rule out overheating: www.piriform.com/speccy Download Speccy (It's free) and run it. Then, click on File --> Post Snapshot. Post your results to us here and we'll let you know :) If it's not that, it's highly likely the power supply. |
Chilling_Silence (9) | ||
| 1316327 | 2012-12-04 16:49:00 | If I might continue on with Chilling_Silence direction, which sounds worth trying while you have no idea what it could be, what is the power rating of the power supply, and some of your hardware e.g. number hard drive & CDROM drive etc, I doubt if you would have a 200 Watt power module and also a 100 Watt sound card in there, then you might have trouble. (sorry my sick humor again) My Windows 98se machine randomly used to cut out just like you said, it was a heat problem, built up of dust in the heat fins, so it needed a blow out. however the difference was once it got over the warming up period half a hour it was more likely to keep going, up until that half hour it used to drive me nuts. But it still gave trouble after that warm up. So one could ask "what do you think of the CPU fan?" is it a cheap looking thing? and have you tried taking the cover off your computer and blowing a external fan into the computer to see how that goes. |
Frank_sumbody (16923) | ||
| 1316328 | 2012-12-04 18:35:00 | Overheating is pretty specific. Generally it would boot OK, then once heat is high, then shut off. Restarting at that point wouldn't help, it would shut off again straight away - until it's cooled down. So unless it has that kind of pattern (and I doubt it would last 6 years either) it isn't heat. What PSU has it got in it? |
pctek (84) | ||
| 1316329 | 2012-12-04 19:36:00 | sorry pctech I am not trying to pull your nose? that is how it happened for me, when I applied thermal paste inbetween CPU & heatsink no more problem. At one stage I had the power supply apart _ a waste of time that was | Frank_sumbody (16923) | ||
| 1 2 3 | |||||