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Computer Shuts Off Randomly! WTF?!?

AmdEmAll

AmdEmAll

Diamond Member
Ok, my parents computer has been having this weird problem for about 2 weeks and I cant figure out what is wrong with it. The computer just shuts off, it doesnt matter what your doing or how long its been on. It shuts off when it feels like it. I played counterstrike on it for an hour and it was fine but then it just shut off!, no lights, no fans, nothing. Then i go to turn it on and nothing happens. So I waited a few minutes and then it worked. I swapped powersupplys and checked all the connections. I have no idea what is causing this. Could the motherboard or harddrive be going bad??? When i run disk doctor it says there is a DOS boot problem and it cant fix it. Also when i do go to shut it down the harddrive shuts off first and then everything else shuts off a couple seconds later. And one more really weird thing is Standby. When you turn the computer on the standby light stays on. But when you put it on standby the light goes off. Then you go out of standby and it stays off until you reboot it. And the last weird thing is that I and my parents swear we can hear the fans going up and down in speed when you open a file. I dont see how it could be the PSU because ive tryed two different ones and im sure that at least one of them works fine.

Im telling them to they need to upgrade 😛 durons are very cheap..lol

Any help would be appriciated.
 


<< I and my parents swear we can hear the fans going up and down >>



That is the hard drive. 🙂

By the way, my friend is having somewhat of the same problem... Similar problem...

I'm thinking, in my friend's case, that it is the quality, or lack there of, of the power supply!
 
So do you think it is the harddrive that is going bad??? That was one of the things I was thinking. It is a WD 5400rpm 13gb. Its about 1 year old. File transfers and installations do seem to be very very slow lately...

Also I disabled ACPI to no avail.
 
Ummm...I doubt that it is going bad. Sometimes the hard drive just needs to look around real quick so it's RPM goes up I guess. It happens to the best of drives. 😛
 
that sounds to me like a faulty power connection somewhere, be it on the motherboard itself or on the hard drive. i am no expert, just my gut feeling 😛 how big is the PS and what other components do you have running(may be sucking too much juice for it to handle)
 
I had the same problem when I first got a Compaq (wtf was I thinking)? Anyway, the damn thing shut down while I was doing a clean install of Win98... messed up. It would shut down suddenly like that for the first two weaks I bought it. Eventually I narrowed it down to a heat problem, so I bought one of those harddrive coolers. Not sure how much it helps, but I run the computer with the case off now and it doesn't do that anymore. By the way, Compaq is suck! And I think everyone else would agree. If your parents have had the computer for a while, perhaps there is too much dust in the machine? Vac the sucker, you'll be surprised as to how much dust can accumulate. It's rather disgusting.
 
Im pretty sure its not the powersupply. The computer is a celeron 500 on an Abit BE6. The power supply was a 300watt, I changed it to another 250watt I had laying around. The problems accure with both powersupplys. It has a Matrox G400 32mb card in it, I tryed a Diamond speedstar A90 and that didnt fix the problems either. Sound blaster live value, linksys network card , and 56k modem. The thing is, the computer has been working fine on this setup for at least 2-4 months with no problems. All of a sudden this started happening. We did have some weird power surges over here one night, that could have messed it up. But I tryed two different psu...
 
hmm I doubt heat is a problem concidering it is in the basement and it is a celeron which dont run hot. But yes a spyder colany has seemed to have growned under the 56k modem. I will have to go take care of that.
 
woa, this sounds all to weird. Have you tried another power outlet? You might even want to try moving the computer to another room even. And what OS are they running? There is a problem w/ WinME and Windows 2k where they shut down too fast and the hard drive shuts off before it has enough to time save everything so perhaps that could be it. If that is the case try d/ling the fix for that bug which I believe you can find at windows update
 
Might try this, check it out by taking out the modem first and see if it still does it. Then try any components (cards) one at a time. Might want to leave video in 🙂. Also check the mouse to make sure its not shoved in with pins bent. I had that happen once on a lap top. Caused same type of faliure... if all else fails, ground out the mother board and tell parents they need a new T-Bird and asus av7 ....just kidding..
 
I know its time to get a new computer or FORMAT when/if this starts happening but I see you have a pretty up-to-date computer? Its usually the power supply or motherboard.
 
naw it doesnt sound hardware ish, recent power lightning probs?? try a fresh install of the os without the modem,, a power flutter could have come thru the modem, not enough to fry the modem or any hardware, but might have messed up the system a little bit, also any recent additions of programs, ???before you buy new system grab the latest drivers all around, put em on a floppy or cd, and reinstall the os plain vanilla then the sound card then the nic then the modem. should be good, (try the new drivers before the os reinstall make sure their good, and the old drivers might have been corupted and caused the probs, and you wont hafta reinstall the os
 
crazy, my A7V was doing that and it was a bad power supply. Swapped it out and all is well. Try reseating everything and if that doesnt work I dont know what else.....
 
alright thanks guys. Ill try what you guys said and see if any of it works. I should just tell my parents they need new mb and cpu😀
 


<< Ummm...I doubt that it is going bad. Sometimes the hard drive just needs to look around real quick so it's RPM goes up I guess. It happens to the best of drives. >>



The rotation speed of the HDD doesn't go up and down, it starts at 5400 or whatever the RPM is and stays there until it is time for it to go to rest.



<< hmm I doubt heat is a problem concidering it is in the basement and it is a celeron which dont run hot >>



Well, if the fans are going up and down, then there could be a heating problem, try to find the noisy fan and exchange it, check the CPU, is it hot? go under the heat sink and touch it, is it hot? If it is, check the HSF, is the fan spinning as it should? is the HSF seated correctly, does it make sufficient contact with the CPU?

Just some suggestions. if they do not help you, you are free to send me a private message.

Patrick Palm

Am speaking for PC Resources
 
Ok I think ive solved one problem. I was messing with the psu to motherboard cable and when I would jiggle it a bit the computer would turn off or the fans would go down in speed. It sounds like there is a short in the wire there. I replaced the psu with another one I have. So far so good. I still have problems with the standby lights being on when its not on standby and I run norton scan disk and it says there is a DOS Boot Error and it cant fix it. How do I fix this? Please dont say I have to format again:|
 
As for the lights, it's possible the little jumper-plug-in thing to the motherboard for the standby LED could be backwards. Then again it probably wouldn't turn on while the computer isn't in standby, oh well just a thought.
 
A friend of mine had the EXACT same problem. It was his power button. He cut the cords and had to ghetto rig it so he could turn it on by touching two cords together. But once he took off the power button and ghetto rigged it, no problems whatsoever.
 
With one stick of samsung ram in a computer I used to own it would restart for no reason once in a while. This was only when it was overclocked though. I changed the ram for micron and I can overclock higher and havn't had a problem since.
 
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