I hate my PC

[Sage]

Well earlier today my machine was working fine, I stopped and had to buy tires, curses, and then slept some, just woke up and the piec of crap machine won't start. It makes an attempt and then shuts down. Noooo. I'm wondering if the PSU is dying. I had to replace it before. I believe it's over 600 w. The only strange thing that has happened recently is that when I would boot up the pc the resolution of my monitor would be lower than I had set it too. It made me wonder if the graphics card was crapping out. Any thoughts would be great. I'm starting to feel cursed. :( Every time I start to make progress something terrible happens.. WTF. :D whatever.

Car died, bought new car, needed to replace all the freaking tires, now the PC might be gone...

Let me know what you think thanks.

Alex

pc specs

2 gigs of ram
PSU 650 w ???
graphics card evga 512 agp
two hard drives

[IronHawk]

does your mobo have onboard video or do you have a old gfx card?

try stripping down to the essentials cpu, mobo, psu, ram. Unplug drives gfx cards whatever else and try to get it to post and into the bios and see if it stays stable.

if you dont have an extra vid card just pull it and see if it will stay running stable without it in there.

once you get it to stablize start plugging stuff in 1 at a time and restarting. Just trying to get to the bios and be stable. its also quicker to shut down from bios cause you can just turn it off.

if you strip it down to just board, psu and ram and it still shuts down pull the ram and listen for 3 beeps. post code indicating missing ram. usually means the board is still good.

all i can think of right now.

GL

[RustyFranks]

how is the airflow / cooling? my computer had some heat issues and would do all kinds of weird things at random intervals. dremel + fan = fixed.

do everything ironhawk said though. tis the best way to troubleshoot it.

[caseofchill]

Just agreeing with what has been said. If it makes an attempt to start, then the power supply is fine. Usually, if it shuts itself off quickly, it means it is overheating. I would open the case and use a little compressed air on it. The lower resolution sounds like your graphics card is crapping out, but that should not effect the computer turning itself on and off.

[IronHawk]

yeah forgot that one.. lol. check if your fans are all spinning/ clogged.

[Lee3dee]

I feel your pain, my comp has been acting up all day. Maybe cause its Sunday

[hobodactyl]

Don't know one off the top of my head, but you can get programs to check your PC's temp levels, if it's getting that far into running. If not, I would recommend checking stuff like the CPU's connection to the heat sink on it. My friend was recently having similar problems, and was able to find out that it was overheating but he couldn't figure out why. He ended up finding that some of the conductive gel between the CPU and the heat sink was burnt off or something, anyway just got some more gel and put it back between it and it works fine again. Hope it's something that easy :\

[PolyHertz]

how quick does it shut off after you press the power button? if it's a second or two it's more then likely either the power supply, ram, or in some cases the hdd (yea, I saw that be the cause more then a few times back when I was a comp tech). try pulling the different components seperatly and see if theirs any change.

Otherwise, the more specific you can be on what it's doing the better we can attempt to figure out the cause.

[IronHawk]

if you regrease your cpu clean off the old stuff first dont just apply new or more. it needs to bond to get a good connection.

[Sage]

Well I took it apart. and decided to unplug the psu and plugged it back in. now it does nothing. Nothing... crap I hope I didn't fry the freaking board. Now it doesn't even attempt to start. The board is designed to not start if it has any power issues tha might fry it. The light on board goes on but nobody is home. I guess I can trying buying another psu and see if the bitch starts with that.

all i did was take out every component, drives, ram, pci card. Lat thing I did was remove the PSU and plug back in. So a green light goes on but nothing happens when I press power. This moth is turning out great. :)

Alex

[PolyHertz]

pull the hdd before messing with it too much, don't want to accidently fry it when messing with plugging in and out psu's.

[pliang]

If the temperature's the prob...when using compressed air to clean...should try pc vacuum the machine too if its know to have been dusty inside.

[Ryan Clark]

It's not turning on?

I recommend the following procedure:

1. Disconnect all peripherals, hard drives PCI cards, etc. Leave only PSU, RAM, CPU, fans, and video card installed.

2. Does it power on now? If not, try removing and re-connecting your RAM, video card, and PSU. If possible, move the RAM to a new slot. Blow on all connectors and slots.

3. If your stripped system is able to power-on, reconnect peripherals individually. Test occasionally, to make sure that you can still power on. This way you'll know if a certain peripheral is causing the problem.

4. If a specific peripheral seems to cause the problem, double-check to determine whether the fault might lie in the peripheral or the slot / connector on your motherboard.

[Sage]

Someone get me a make art button maybe it will fix this. Everything is out. all the drives are in a safe place. the only thing I can kill now is the psu, motherboard, and processor. Thanks for all the suggestions.

Alex

[MightyPea]

If it makes an attempt to start, then the power supply is fine.

Is this actually true? I had a broken powersupply once where it did attempt to boot, but quickly turned off. Mostly just a beep and a lightup, then nothing. Swapping out the powersupply fixed it.

[hawken]

reset your hardware at the shop with some money

[notman]

If you've already had a power supply crap out, I wouldn't be surprised if it happens again. You may have a crappy power source that keeps killing power supplies... that or you're buying cheap power supplies, which work, but don't hold up well.

[Illusions]

If power is your problem, you should invest in a better power supply, and perhaps even a good quality UPS/battery backup. Whether or not you need the backup ability, quite a few of them provide both surge protection and cleaner power.

[Sage]

I'll be buying a new power supply to see if this fixes the problem i was going to go with an antec 650 w psu. Since I bought those freaking tires I have to wait to have a bit more money to spend 130 bucks on this. The timing just blows. With my luck I'll check my email and surprise, surprise an art test. No pc to do it. I'll probaly buy that apc thing as well.

My graphics card is an EVGA 7600 gt 512 8x agp I have two eide hard drives one is 80 gigs and the other is about 250. dvd/crrw combo and a dvd burner. I have a sound card and a usb 2 expansion slot. 3 gigs of ram running xp pro. So I'm wondering if an antec 500 w or 650 is enough. I'm hoping it just the psu.

Thanks for the feedback.

[Jonathan]

Hey,

I have an Athena 550w PSU lying around, since I moved to a 750w. I have used it with a 7800gtx, 7900gtx, and 7950gx2/dual-core, etc. so it'll power anything you have. It was always a great PSU, but when I bought a 8800gtx, I was wanting to make sure I had enough juice for it so I bought a Thermaltake 750w Toughpower PSU.

I'll send it to you for free, as I don't use it, and would like to help out. :)

I live in the US too, so shipping won't be an issue.

[Sage]

Thanks for the offer Jonathan.

The place I live in has some very cheap electic wiring. So I guess that might be killing my psu. My freaking land lord is so freaking cheap. For example i can't have the ac on in the computer room while my roomates have their ac on their room or the power goes out in part of the house.

Alex

[Ryan Clark]

If that's the problem, you just need a UPS to clean the power for you.

Your deskop will draw power from the UPS battery, so you'll know that it's getting clean power.

You will need a "continuous" UPS for this purpose. A "standby" UPS won't really help.

[EarthQuake]

Thanks for the offer Jonathan.

The place I live in has some very cheap electic wiring. So I guess that might be killing my psu. My freaking land lord is so freaking cheap. For example i can't have the ac on in the computer room while my roomates have their ac on their room or the power goes out in part of the house.

Alex

Yeah i've had problems with poor wiring/power that would shut off a lot at shity places before. One of the best things you can do once you've sorted the issue is invest in a battery backup + surge protector. I had a lot of problems with the power going out and eventually it a took a pretty major toll on my system. You can get a battery backup for 40 or $50 at officemax or some place like that.

[IronHawk]

yeah brownouts are horrible for computers. It's not just the power outages its small drops in current that just wreak havoc on systems. do your lights dim from time to time? those are those dips.

[Sage]

no but I hear the damn current change and no when something is up. It makes a buzzing sound. very annoying.

[Sage]

Well I bought a new psu and plugged it back in and everything seems to work fine. Thanks Jonathan for your help and good luck on your interview. Thanks everyone for all the feedback, it helped while I took this thing apart and put it back together again. I had to clean the heatsink and relube it since my case is a bit cramped. Later.

Alex

[ChrisG]

check out speedfan, that tells you how hot your comp is running

chris