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System shutdown (shut out)

E

EBUCK

Junior Member
I am an amateur computer builder. Recently I built myself what I thought was a strong machine. To give you a rundown:

EPoX i-915 Grantsdale Motherboard
Pentium 4/3.4 GHz 800M CPU
Mushkin Dual V2 1G DDR400 Memory
2 Western Digital 74GB 10K RPM HD
ATI Radeon X700PRO 256MB Video Card
ASUS DVD Drive
NEC DVD+/-RW
In an air cooled server tower.

I'm running XP Pro with SP 2.

Mostly everything runs great. But I have a problem when I run heavier applications. For example, if I'm playing a high graphics game or most recently trying to upload digital video from a camera, the monitor screen goes black as if the power were cut, the HD led lights up with no usual performance noises (as if the HD weren't doing anything) and the led on the master DVD drive lights up (with or wothout a disk in there).
So the screen is black and the computer is still on, and the really strange thing is that I cannot reset or turn off the computer from the front panel. I have to switch off the power supply and turn it back on. Then when I boot up, there is no usual windows warning saying that windows was not shut down appropriately. On boot up everything seems normal. Preliminary research, I thought the HD's were overheating.
Any ideas? I'm stuck!

 
Originally posted by: EBUCK
Either Ad Aware or Spybot, and a couple of times doing a disk defrag
Click to expand...

That's not going to load the CPU 100%. Use something like Prime95 or, better yet, one of the BOINC projects (I run Rosetta@ home). That will give the CPU 100% load, then check the temp after about 5 min.

Are you using the stock Intel cooler? Did you use the thermal pad or something like Artic Silver?
 
For the power supply, I'm using Antec True Power 2.0. I'll have to try your suggestion for loading my CPU. Thanks for the help thus far...

Also FYI I was playing Rome Total War earlier today and the same problem occurred. Monitor shut off and the master disk drive LED was on. Only way to turn off the system was to kill power at the power supply.
 
Originally posted by: EBUCK
For the power supply, I'm using Antec True Power 2.0. I'll have to try your suggestion for loading my CPU. Thanks for the help thus far...

Also FYI I was playing Rome Total War earlier today and the same problem occurred. Monitor shut off and the master disk drive LED was on. Only way to turn off the system was to kill power at the power supply.
Click to expand...

The 2.0 Antec is ATX 12V 550W
 
Do you have any other ram modules you can test in the system? Might want to run memtest86 so we can see if there's any errors in your modules.
 
I tried to get on to one of the BOINC projects, but I was having difficulty connecting after downloading the project manager. I'm not sure if it is my security settings or what, and I created a boot CD of the memtest you suggested, but couldn't get it to run. I haven't had a lot of time to mess around with it, however there are new developments.

After the last time that this event happened, there was a post code on the motherboard of 'FF'. For FF, there are four possible problems:
1. BIOS chip inserted incorrectly
2. Incorrect BIOS update version
3. Mainboard problem
4. Add-on card inserted incorrectly

From the problem I had stated, and these post code possible problems, any other ideas? I'm still puzzled by the fact that I can't shut the computer off from the power or reset switch (even after holding for 5 sec.), but only at the power supply.
 
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