Computer will no longer boot up

[Wishy]

First off, apologies if I ask dumb stuff (but ya know... its likely!). Second thing, it's not my computer its my brother in laws which I have been tasked with trying to fix (yippee...) so if you need more info than I have it will take a day or two to get the answerws from him.

Ok, with that out the way....

The problem I am having is my bro-in-law just recently bought a MSI 645 Ultra mobo with a 2.8 pentium 4 chip fitted. He slapped it in his case, fitted the harddrive etc etc and fired it up. The thing ran fine for a couple of days, but wasn't being used much.

On the thrid day he started to get problems.

Windows started behaving erratically, loads of windows popped up all over the place ("It totally spazzed out!" in his own words) and he had to leave it alone for a few minutes and then got control of the mouse back and was able to close them all. Then it hung, crashed and now won't reboot.

On reboot the motherboard powers up for about 5 seconds, all the fans start etc, then there is a single beep and it shuts down.

Initially I thought it might be his crappy old 250w power supply, so I took a new 550w one around but nothing changed.

Any suggestions on what might be causing the problem?

EDIT: The computer is running XP home, has 512mb RAM, a radeon 9600 128mb video card, 2 hard drives, and a sound card (but no idea what make. Its a fairly good one though if that makes any difference..).

 

[BadThad]

Check his CPU cooler installation. If it runs for a few seconds, then turns off, it could be getting too hot. Also, you may want to pull the mobo out and make sure nothing is grounding-out the back. I've seen people leave ununsed stand-offs when swapping mobos and they short the back of the mobo....very bad.

Also wondering.....what kind of windows were popping up all over the place? That sounds like malware to me. What 550w power supply did you try in there? Judging a PS by watts is a HUGE mistake. There's a lot of criteria that make a GOOD power supply and watts is actually a pretty small factor.

 

[Wishy]

Originally posted by: BadThad
Check his CPU cooler installation. If it runs for a few seconds, then turns off, it could be getting too hot.

Rightio will check that. Not 100% sure what I need to check though. We did dismount the cooler to check there was paste on the chip (it was pre-installed when he bought the board) and there was. What else should I be looking for?

Originally posted by: BadThadAlso, you may want to pull the mobo out and make sure nothing is grounding-out the back. I've seen people leave ununsed stand-offs when swapping mobos and they short the back of the mobo....very bad.

OK, once more not 100% on this having not put a PC togethe myself, but will do a bit of googling and will check that too.

Originally posted by: BadThadAlso wondering.....what kind of windows were popping up all over the place? That sounds like malware to me. What 550w power supply did you try in there? Judging a PS by watts is a HUGE mistake. There's a lot of criteria that make a GOOD power supply and watts is actually a pretty small factor.

No idea what windows were poppping up, but I doubt it was mal-ware as the computer has no internet connection at all and is just used to run music and video editing packages. Will ask him again though to see if he can shed any more light on what they were.

The power supply was a cheapish one from ebuyer.com, Linky which on it says it is a ColorsIt ATX 12V P4 Model 550U.

It had good reviews so just went for it. What criteria should I be looking for?

Thanks!

 

[BadThad]

Rightio will check that. Not 100% sure what I need to check though. We did dismount the cooler to check there was paste on the chip (it was pre-installed when he bought the board) and there was. What else should I be looking for?

If you removed the cooler, then you must re-apply thermal compound! Checking to see that's it there is no good, it could have been incorrectly applied. I recommend you buy some Artic Silver and follow the appication directions on their website. Is this a stock Intel cooler or an after-market one?

I don't trust that power supply personally. Unless it was reviewed on a reputable website, reviews are worthless IMO. You need to look at the amount of current delivered at each voltage rail and efficiency. I didn't find ANY specs on current when I searched the web, that scares me. On the flip side, that system is not overly demanding on a power supply...it might just be fine.

Let's assume the PS is fine for now because there's a lot of other things to check first. Replace the thermal compound, then...you're not going to like this....pull the mobo out of the case and put it on a piece of cardboard or something non-conducting. Put in just one RAM module, the video card/monitor and connect the power supply. There should be TWO connections to the mobo, the main ATX power connector and the 12V CPU power line. Use a screwdriver and quickly short the pins for the power switch on the mobo...see if it posts and you can get into the BIOS.

 

[Wishy]

Thanks a lot.

Will try all that next time I can get over to see him (he lives 1.5 hours drive away...) and if I have any further problems will doubtless come running back squealing for help like a pig on fire.

 

[Wishy]

All done and all working.

Most embarrasing really (I so should have seen this the first time!), once I took the mobo out of the case and took the heat sink off to clean it and reseat it with new paste I noticed that there was quite a lot of dust around the edges of the heat sink.

"Most peculiar!" thought I, seeing as how I had been told it was a new mobo & heatsink.

Turns out it was new to my brother-in-law, but was distinctly second hand. He'd bought it off one of his dodgy mates.

I used my air can and blew an absolutely astounding amount of compacted dust, hair and cat fur out of the heat sink. It was so compacted it was like felt. Never seen anything like it....

ANyway, once that had been done and the new thermal paste applied the computer runs like a dream.

Thanks for your help. I'll doubtless be back with more idiot adventures from the land of crap IT amateurism...

 

[YoshiSato]

Mobo is fried. Time to get new one.