System Died for no reason, please help me out here

69matrix69

Senior member
Jan 20, 2001
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hi
I have a Pentium 4 1.5ghz processor, a golden orb for the HS/fan, a abit p4t motherboard, geforce II 32meg vid card, soundblaster 5.1 sound card, 512 megs of samsung pc800 ram. Anyway, my PC was running for 3 days in a row with no shut down (this is normal, i have ran it for 2 weeks with no shut down before) anyway, today i shut it off because it seemd to be running a little slow (i thought it needed a reboot) i went to turn it on again and i got nothing. to i thought to unplug it and wait 10 or 15 seconds, so i did and it booted to the windows screen and shut down again on its own. so i unpluged it for 20 more seconds, and rebooted. the pc turned on and went into windows for about 15 seconds, then shut down again. so i did the unplug trick again and it booted up again. this time it stayed on for about 2 hours, i left the room and came back in to find it had shut off again. so i tried the plug thing again, and this time it wouldnt do anything. so i pulled the pc out of my desk and took the cover off and looked around inside. i unpluged everything and pluged it back in again (i thought maby it was a loose wire) i even took the HF/fan off the CPU to look if i might have cracked the CPU (it has never been OC'd, but i looked just in case) once i had the case off, i saw something interested when i tried to boot. if i shut off the power supply and waited 15 min (enough for the green light on the MB to turn off) then pluged it back in, and hit the power button, the PSU fan, and the 3 fans in the case did about a 1/2 turn when i tried to power it up.
the weirdest thing is i havent had my case open in about 2 or 3 weeks. ususly if something isnt working is because of something i did, so this has me lost. if you can think of anything for me to try, or if you think you know whats broken post here, icq me or e-mail me. i need my main pc back up and running and im lost on ideas for this. thanks in advance for any help.
 

Chubbbs

Member
Apr 7, 2001
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So your fans are only doing a 1/2 turn and then stopping? There can only be a few things wrong. The first reason is that your power supply is not working properly. This would explain the fans and also the problem with windows randomly shutting down Next, the voltage regulator(s) on your motherboard could be blown. If any of your fans are plugged straight into the PSU with a 4-pin connector, then this is most likely not the case. Next, you can have a general problem with your motherboard, like a near short between the power switch pins (that would do it) or something along those lines. It is definately a problem with your power system and not any peripheral or logic problem. If all of your fans are plugged into the motherboard and you happen to have a 4-pin adapter, try using it on one of your fans. If that fan works, that its your motherboard. If it doen't, then it's your power supply and you should get a new one at 300W or higher. If you already have some fans in the motherboard and some on the power supply, then I have no clue what your problem is. I hope this helps.
 

69matrix69

Senior member
Jan 20, 2001
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i have my CPU fan/heatsink pluged into my motherboard. the 3 fans i have intaking and extaking air are 4 plug hook ups with pass throughs through them. none of them are hooked up to my motherboard directly. do you know anyway i can test my MB to see if something is blown like you sugested? i hope this is as simple as my PS, but im not sure it is. the PS is about 4 months old. i got it new. its 400 watts, so it isnt being overpowered or anything. all i have in my system are 2 HD's, 2 CD drives, an A drive, and the 3 fans. let me knwo what you think about the problem now you know more :)
 

pamf

Senior member
Dec 11, 2000
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I recently had a similar problem with one of my athlon machines. It turned out to be the power supply. If you have another system you can test that one in, then you can find out quickly if its the problem or not.. The one I had that died was a 300w and was only about 6 months old, so age doesn't really mean anything.
 

69matrix69

Senior member
Jan 20, 2001
884
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76
I do have 3 other systems here, so ill rip it out and test it on one of them. i also have a case on the way to me (it should arive today) so ill have a new power supply to test in the P4 box if i want. thanks for the idea, ill do that and post back.