Computer Intermittently Refuses to Post

[Wieland]

I'm troubleshooting my parents desktop computer. I built it ~2 years ago. It started having problems a couple months ago. Once every week or two it would refuse to post at start-up (no video output and no beeps), and the power and reset buttons wouldn't respond. After a hard reset of the power supply, everything would work fine again.

This problem seems to show up in the morning, only after the computer has been shut down for several hours. I have the computer setup to hibernate if it isn't used for an hour; it goes through many power cycles without issue.

There are no detectable problems after the computer has booted. I've run CPU Stability Test and FurMark without issue.

Yesterday I finally tried swapping the power supply with a trustworthy spare. Again everything seemed to work fine, but this morning it repeatedly failed to boot windows. There were visual artifacts on the windows loading screen (sections of green and red lines across the screen). I did a hard reset again, and now it's up and running with no signs of instability.

Any ideas as to whats wrong? I suspect the problem is with the motherboard, but I don't want to swap it out unless it is for sure the problem. Thanks in advance for any help.

System Info:
Athlon 64 X2 5000+ (Running Stock Currently)
Biostar TA780G M2+ Motherboard (latest Bios Revision)
Kingston HyperX DDR2 1066 2GBx1
Integrated Radeon HD3200
Hitachi 320GB SATA Hard Drive
Lite-On iHAS224-06 DVD Burner
Old Floppy Drive
Windows 7 Ultimate x64

 

[mpilchfamily]

Sounds as if the motherboard may be the problem. Then again you said you have artifacts on the windows load screen. So it may be the video card is going bad.

Question is does the motherboard have a speaker on it? From what i can find it doesn't have a built in speaker so unless you have one attached you won't hear any beeps. So get a speaker connected and then listen for beeps. You may get the beep code indicating the video card is going bad. The beep code will tell you for sure. If you still get no beep even with a speaker attached then its a good chance the motherboard is going bad.

 

[sandorski]

Check for Bulging Caps or scorch marks. Does sound like Mobo.

 

[mckickflip]

This happened to me on last computer I built (ECS A780GM-A Ultra). Updating to the latest BIOS fixed the problem for me.

I'd suggest checking for a BIOS update, and if you already have the latest version (or that doesn't fix it), doing what sandorski said.