Computer will randomly not start up

[j1b5c]

My specs:

Pentium 4 3.4 ghz Prescott cpu
Intel D915PBL motherboard
Thermalright XP-120 fan
1024 mb RAM
Antec Sonata 380 watt Case
200 gb Seagate SATA hard drive

Average temps: 47-51 degrees Celcius idle. Maybe 57-59 degrees Celcius when playing a game.

My computer has been acting crazy lately. It has never frozen on me while I've been doing something. Lately though, if I leave it idle, doing nothing, it will freeze when I've come back to it and I can't get any response from the keyboard, mouse, or pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL. If I restart, one of three things will happen:

1) The computer will start-up. Woohoo!
2) THe computer will not start-up. All the response I get from the computer is that the computer sounds powered on, and all the fans are spinning, but nothing shows up on the screen and I don't hear the beep that tells me that my computer is successfully starting up.
3) The computer will start-up, I see the screen that tells me that the RAM is being tested, it will get to about 200 MB tested, then it will stall and stay there for hours.

Right now, I have only my fans connected, monitor, and keyboard. The computer has not stalled at all upon posting since I've disconnected everything else.

The fan on the back of my computer doesn't spin completely. It does sort of half-butt spins and isn't giving as much as air as it should.

Does anyone have any suggestions??? Any help is much appreciated.

 

[sivart]

I would first check the power supply to make sure it is okay and then inspect the motherboard. I have had similiar problems on a motherboard with bad capacitors. Although, I thought that this was limited to some of the older boards (2001-2002 time frame)

 

[j1b5c]

Hmm...I'm kind of out of luck in terms of being able to swap parts and try different things out. I'm at college right now and I don't know too many computer nerds all of my spare parts that I could screw around with are at home. I guess I could try buying a new power supply and trying that out and returning it if it doesn't fix anything and that would leave the motherboard to be the problem. Well thanks for the advice.

 

[sivart]

also try booting with minimal hardware to see if that will help (mobo, CPU, memory, video card), then add back one component at time. (I.e. hard drive, CD ROM, floppy, other add in cards).

Check to make sure that the power supply fan is working and not getting too hot itself. I've seen machines with dieing power supplies act the same way. Ran fan once booted, but would hang on reboot.

 

[j1b5c]

Okie doke. I will do. Thanks for helping out.

 

[VertigoLabs]

 

[VertigoLabs]

i had a similar issue on an epox 8rda3+ it acted very odd did odd thing restarted randomly mine was the capasitors on the mobo leaking acid
take a look for corosion

also the last guys advice is right on disconnect everything hd everything and see if it posts then add from there
anywho i hope you get it fixed

 

[j1b5c]

It looks like I found the problem. Hopefully it will stay fixed, but I'll see what happens.

Today, my laptop randomly stopped working. It would get power but would not boot up. I wouldn't be able to see any boot logo or anything when it attempted to start up. I took out a piece of RAM and restarted it and voila it worked. So I decided to try it on my desktop. I took out one of my 512 sticks of RAM and since, it's booted up fine and hasn't had any problems.

Thanks for the help guys,