Computer Dies and House Power Blips - What Happened

[nasttcar]

In my small home office (actually a big closet under the stairs) I have 2 computers setup. One of those was a custom built PC with an 800Mhz Athlon. The other is a 2Ghz unit. Normally I keep both machines running. All of a sudden the 2Ghz computer loses power, the TV turns off, the lights flicker, and the 800Mhz unit goes dead.

There were not incoming power blips, the weather was beautiful. However, everything on the same circuit as the 800Mhz unit saw something. All units are connected through high quality surge protectors.

The 800 Ghz unit will not power up so I figure the PS must have died.

The 800 Ghz unit had not been a seconds problem in 3 years.

Any suggestions, or theories?

Thx.

 

[Mark R]

Lights flickering suggests a problem with the incoming power - maybe a brief brown-out. It's possible that the PSU was unable to operate correctly under brown-out conditions and failed (possibly exaccerbated due to age, etc.)

An alternative explanation is a sudden catastrophic failure of the PSU. This briefly acted as a short circuit - drawing hundreds of amps until a fuse blew/breaker tripped. The massive load would cause dimming of the lights. Under these circumstances I would expect there to be evidence of burning within the PSU - although modern regulations require that PSUs should not smoke or explode under all forseeable fault conditions.

 

[nasttcar]

Thanks. I too suspected a massive short circuit in the PS too. Checked breakers but none were tripped. Only those things on the same circuit saw the power blip. No clocks, or other computers (3) in the house, and on the same network, saw anything.

I plan on removing the PS from another ATX computer and see if it powers up.

 

[FallenRain]

Wow, your problem sounds exactly like mine.

I just recently bought a new computer with a 2.17GHZ AMD Athlon XP 2700+. The computer had been running fine for about a week then all of a sound my power flickers and my computer dies. When I tried booting it up again, my activity LEDs came on and all my Cathode Lights (4) and Fans (3x80mm, 1x60mm) came on. The things that didn't come on was my Processor activity light, CD-Rom drives had red instead of green LEDs and they wouldn't open, and there was no Post beeps or video image on my monitor. At first I was befuddled. Then I assumed it was the PSU. Upon inspection, there were no burn marks and everything seemed to be intact, but when i powered my comp up again, different lights blinked once and died and my fans were running slower. So I bought myself another PSU. Once I installed it and power the computer on, everything turned on, but no video image and no post beeps, the computer was dead except for the lights, fans, drives (w/there leds), and activity lights (only they were showing activity).

This disturbed me very much so my friend came over with his AMD computer and we began trouble-shooting and here is what we discovered:

After swapping processors (his is a 1400+) into each other's machines, when we turned his on with my processor it worked, but when we turned mine on, it didn't work. So we swapped our processors back and his worked fine and my still nothing.

To make sure my RAM was ok, we systematically inserted my RAM into his comp and ran the comp. All of the Ram work.

Then we checked my drives, they all worked.

So that left the Mobo. So I am going to contact my mobo maker (ASUS) and see what they can do.

I am really sorry this took so long and took so much space but I really hope this helps you. My advice would be to begin troubleshooting. Get another PSU or have a friend come over and test your stuff on his machine. If your problem is anything like mine than I am guessing your mobo is what is wrong and that everything else is OK, but don't take my word on that. I hope none of your stuff is damage and best of luck to you. I know how frustrating it can be!

 

[Krusher]

I'd agree with the brownout theory. You said that you have a surge protector, but not a UPS. Now that you can get them as cheap as $40, I would really recommend that you get a UPS. Any UPS is better than just a surge strip.

If your power supply shorted that hard to dim the lights in the house, you'd blow that breaker and smell it. Hopefully it just took out your power supply and not anything connected to it along the way.

For those that are unfamiliar, UPS = Uninterruptable Power Supply. Basically, a short or long term battery backup. (Depends on your funding!) Models with AVR (Automatic Voltage Regulation) are better than those without, but any UPS is better than none.

 

[lobadobadingdong]

Uninteruptable Power Supply = Nearly free insurance.