Boot up problems.. a strange one

[atroposproject]

First off, here's the system specs:

ENERMAX INFINITI 650w PS
ASUS P5K DELUXE mobo
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz procesor
mushkin 4GB (4 x 1GB) DDR2 800
GIGABYTE GV-NX86T256H GeForce 8600 GT vid card

The box is also running 4 internal SATA drives.. no raid.

I've had this current config for about 6 months now. Very rarely in the past, upon bootup, the machine would run for about 6 seconds, shut off, power up again, shut off... and just keep doing this. You don't see anything show up on the monitor, not even a BIOS splash screen.

As of yesterday, this is now happening constantly. Here's the steps that had been taken.

1) attempting to boot the machine with all drives disconnected, 3 out of 4 sticks of memory removed.... same issue.

2) removing the video card and trying to start up worked... the machine stayed running.

3) after reseating the video card, the machine booted up correctly. However, if you shut down from Windows completely, then try to power back on, you get the same dead cycle.

4) I've narrowed the issue down that if the PC monitor is powered on before the PC itself, bootup fails 100% of the time. If it is powered on after the PC, bootup works 100% of the time.

It's been recommended to me that a beefier power supply may be required. I'm looking to see what other advice you folks might have. I do plan on upgrading the video card in this machine in the future, which I'm sure won't help this problem at all..... but nor do I want to throw money in the wrong area in an attempt to fix this.

This machine had also been the target of a nice little Vundo attack within days of this problem starting to become 100% consistent. The virus is now gone, but the issue is still here..

Your advice is appreciated.

 

[octopus41092]

Well... if its the virus you could always try to reformat and see if that helps. But this sounds like its the power supply seeing as how you had shutdown problems even a while back. The power supply has probably just gottone worse now and needs replacing. You could always buy one from Fry's or something and return it if it's not the problem.

 

[Billb2]

Bad power supply.

 

[Denithor]

Failing PSU or GPU. Your choice.

If you game, consider this a great opportunity to upgrade your video card to something faster.

 

[vanvock]

Welcome to the forums. I seem to have the same prob in reverse, startup dosen't matter but if I turn off the monitor before it completly powers down it just keeps running. I don't think it's a psu or vc hardware problem but rather than get any more grey hair over it I've just got in the habit of waiting to turn off the monitor last.