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I've never seen anything like this....

J

jgambino

Junior Member
the oddest problem i have ever faced.

hello, maybe you can shed some light on this problem. I'm at a loss for any explaination.

Ok, I building a machine for someone, I have built approx two-three dozen machines in the past few years, so I thought I've seen it all. I tend to stick to using the same/similar hardware whenever possible so I'm using:
MSI K8N Neo Mobo,
AMD 64 3000+
1gb Corsair Value Ram
MSI 128mb video agp videocard
an 80gig WD
A 400W powersupply. (can't remember the name but I've had no problems using it atleast 3+ times in the past)

I have used all of these identical parts to build a machine previous (about a month ago) down to the excat model numbers, and everything went very smoothly.

So did this build, booted on the first time, I installed the OS, some software, ran it for about 3 days just sitting there doing nothing. Not one single problem in the world. Went perfectly, I handed the machine off to the people who bought the hardware and washed my hands of it.


30 Minutes later I get a phone call that it's rebooting randomly. When it reboots it stays powered off for several minutes. It will not allow you to turn the power on.

So I figure it's a heat issue, maybe something got knocked loss when transporting it, so I drive over to the computer's new home and witness first hand the behavior.

The machine would reboot randomly, and then refuse to power on. Sometimes it would power on and stay up for a few seconds and power off. I was able to get to the hardware monitor several times and saw normal heat levels approx (40C - 43C) and it even turned off once while I was watching the hardware monitor.

I had built another machine about a year prior for these same people, so I tore apart that machine and interchanged parts (powersupply, CMOS battery) and experienced identical behavior. I reseated the Heatsink. No help.

So, alas, I say I must take the machine again, and reconstruct it. I bring it home, and try to recreate the behavior. I can't. The thing runs like a dream again. No reboots, no not powering on. It's perfect again. It's been up for almost two days without a hint of a problem.

So, what's different between the two locations:
1 USB Mouse
1 Standard Keyboard.
1 Power from the house.

Could any of these cause this completely random behavior?

The machine I built for them a year 1/2 ago has no problems running with this keyboard, mouse, power from the house?

I'm at a total loss for words.
 
First of all, does it crash or just turn off? Make sure you uncheck "Automatically restart" under startup and recovery in system properties.

Well... I don't know if this could be the problem, but I have about the same problem with my surge strip. Sometimes turning off/on my lamp will even cause a crash.

The root of my problem is the cheap surge strip I'm using. I dropped an ashtray on my good apc power strip, thus frying it. I had to switch to the cheap one since it's all I got.

Also, bad ground circuits and power line noise can also cause problems.
 
nocturne:

Thanks, I guess I'm going to have to ask them to start by replacing the power strip / try another outlet (maybe this machine is more touchy to the power situation)

It's a "turn off" problem. It will do it in Windows or BIOS or Boot-up Process, but seems to do it most after it's been on and it's trying to restart. (I'm guessing that's the time when you try the most power from the house)

 
it case anyone cares, it was.....

(drum roll please)

THE KEYBOARD.

I went over and grabbed the keyboard from their house, plugged it into the machine that was running perfectly at my house.

I switched it while the machine was on.

I hit one key and the machine powered down. It would not turn back on with that keyboard in it. (Infact it took several minutes after unplugging the keyboard for the power button to work again)

wow.

Again, I've never seen a keyboard that works on other computers bring a machine literally to it's knees.

 
That's very interesting, was it a USB keyboard? I would have definitely guessed power at their location. But I'm glad you got it figured out. . .

🙂
C
 
Wow. So is there a signal you can send through ps2 (or USB) which will turn the machine off? Maybe it was sending ctrl-alt-del but surely it would just restart once and then work until you press another key... unless it was constantly sending the keys for a couple of minutes, causing the machine to turn off again as soon as it tries to restart?

Or maybe there is a problem in the mobo where in a certain case the power pin is shorted back to a signal pin, causing the whole thing to go into some kind of failsafe mode? But if that's the case the flaw is present on 2 different boards right?

Very strange.
 
I believe you said this was a standard keyboard, vs being a usb keyboard. Don't think I would have taken the chance of swapping it in and out of a live machine...that's just asking for problems.
 
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