Confused hardware question...

[halve]

Well my first post here, I thought I should make it a good one.

I built a computer about 8 months ago, it has a abit kt7a motherboard, with a 900mhz duron. It is housed in a generic case, with a generic 300 watt power supply. My problem is this, when the computer boots up the screen shakes back and forth, about 1 centimeter to the left and then back to the right over and over. When it hits my windows xp login screen it stops. When I get into windows, if I turn my refresh rate up to anything above 60hz, my screen first starts to shake and then it shakes so fast it dulls/blurs. The monitor is a dell P991, and the video card is a geforce3 ti 500. I first called dell and had them replace the monitor. This did not solve it so they replaced my video card, and this did not solve it so they sent me another monitor.

I have given up on Dell because I believe there parts are not to blame. I tried to do a fresh install of xp, but when I boot from the cd after it diagnoses my pc it locks up. So last night I reseated my cpu, memory and pulled out all my cards. I left all cards out except my video card, when I boot up it still shakes. Out of frustration I pulled my bios battery and reset CMOS. To my surprise this fixed the problem, saddly it was only a temporary fix and it came back about 30 minutes later...

So now I am quite confused, could it be the motherboard, or maybe the powersupply? I lean towards the powersupply since it is just a generic one.

What do you all think? Any help would be great.

Thanks much

Halve

 

[BDawg]

Sounds like a power issue. Take a volt-meter to your outlets and make sure you're getting the right voltage.

Or, it could be that generic 300W power supply.

 

[Alex]

first things first... Welcome to AT!

ok now to answer your question... I think you can just about narrow it down to the power supply. One last thing before you buy a new one is see if there are any bios or driver updates for your mobo... maybe it just isn't managing the power properly (?).

Also, it's well worth investing a few extra bucks on a nice and reliable Antec or Enermax PSU!

Hope this helps!

 

[halve]

I normally do not purchase equipment from best buy, but I see they sell antec power supplies. I was thinking about going down and getting one tonight.

Here is the link to best buy power supplies

There are 3 antec powersupplies listed, which one would you purchase to test on my pc? Or if they are over priced I probly should just purchase online and over night it.

Thanks much for the quick responses

Halve

 

[bliab]

As BDawg said it may also be a problem with your building's power. My friend lives in an old building with bad wiring and he had a problem similar to yours. He got a UPS with voltage regulation (AVR) and his problem cleared right up.

 

[majewski9]

Motherboard problem more than likely, but I never run cheap power supplies even if they work.