Computer powers down after one second

hawkeye_wx

Junior Member
Oct 14, 2011
17
0
66
A few weeks ago my mom's radeon 9800 pro began sending a garbled image to the monitor. To confirm the video card as the problem I installed it in another old computer and the same problem popped up, and I also installed a geforce 3 ti200 in my mom's computer and it worked fine. I also tried another old card in her computer, a riva tnt2, and it did not work. I'd push the power button and the computer would start up, but then it would power down after only one second. I tried reseating, etc, but the same thing kept occurring. I figured the tnt2 must have been bad since the geforce 3 ti200 worked fine.

I just got a replacement card, a radeon 9600. I installed it and, you guessed it, the computer powers down after only one second. I tried the 9600 in the other computer and it boots up fine. WTF. I did a google search for the power down problem and found a lot of mentions of the power supply or motherboard. I don't understand why a bad psu or bad agp slot/mobo would prevent the computer from booting up if a riva tnt2 or radeon 9600 was installed, but it boots up fine with a geforce 3 ti200 or radeon 9800 pro installed(9800 is garbled, but it boots fine). That seems awfully random.

Before I take my own computer apart to swap in a new power supply, does anyone have any thoughts?
 

Ketchup

Elite Member
Sep 1, 2002
14,559
248
106
A power off that quick usually does indicate a grounding or power supply problem. How much power does it have?
 

hawkeye_wx

Junior Member
Oct 14, 2011
17
0
66
The computer is an athlon xp @ I think 2.2 GHz, 2 GB ram, hard drive, dvdrom, fan controller, usb hub. The PSU is an Antec 350W.