Freezing at POST. Random turn offs

[Miklebud]

This topic is for my brother who's computer has recently been freezing up or restarting randomly. Awhile ago, it would turn off after about an hour of use, and then about 20 minutes of use. Now when it gets to the POST screen, it just stays there. We've pulled the battery out of the mobo, but that just reset CMOS with no change in results. Any ideas?

ASUS A7N8X-Deluxe
Barton 2500-Mobile (stock 1.8ghz)
Enermax 450Watt?
Nvidia FX5700?
Western Digital 120gb HDD

 

[montag451]

Can you try disconnecting ALL unnecessary hardware -
excess hard drives
optical drives
sound card
nic
etc etc
Can you get into CMOS settings at all?

Have you tried another power cable?
Try switching on without any hard drives.
Do you get any beeps?

 

[drum]

do you have a powersupply you could swap?

 

[Miklebud]

We've tried 2 different power supplies.
It's watercooled, so swapping out other parts are a little more difficult. But we'll dissassemble it this weekend and report back if there are any problems after we swap out a few things.

 

[amdskip]

I would download and run http://www.memtest86.com first before swapping power supplies as its no simple task.

I would also look and see if there are any bad bulging capacitors that look like this: http://members.cox.net/kingkash/epox-8k7a.jpg