Hello. I need your help to figure out what's causing issues with my desktop PC.
It started turning itself off occasionally about a month ago without a blue screen or any other warning. I couldn't pinpoint a particular reason because it would happen at any time. While playing games, watching a movie, even when idling. After a while, it got worse and I noticed a pattern forming. I would turn it on and it would either shut down during the "Starting Windows" screen or it would log into my Windows user and then immediately shut down. It would do this once or twice and then it would work for a few hours before shutting down abruptly again.
Yesterday, it reached what I'm hoping is the worst it can get. It goes to the "Starting Windows" screen and turns off there every single time. I tried booting in Safe Mode but that has the same result. Can't get past this screen at all. Sometimes, I'm given the opportunity to run the Startup Repair tool which, if it doesn't turn off during that, will scan my system for about 15 minutes and then tell me it cannot fix the problem. I can review a detailed diagnostic report which shows a bunch of successful scans and a failed one. Here's a picture of the results.
The system has run well for over a year now. During this time period, I haven't changed any components whatsoever. No overclocking done either. I occasionally open it up and clean it of dust and I did that again as soon as the shutdown issue started manifesting itself. Here's a few other things (in no particular order) that I've tried in the hopes of fixing this issue:
There is one strange exception. It will boot an old disc I have burned with Ultimate Boot CD 4 WinBuilder. It has a Windows-like environment with diagnostic tools (among other things). I ran it and took a screenshot of the temperatures and voltages from SpeedFan, here's a screenshot of that. I also looked at the PC Health Stats in BIOS and took a screenshot there as well, here it is. The temperatures look good, in fact they're not very different from what I usually had when the system ran fine. I check regularly since I had a faulty GPU fan in the past.
I'm at my wits end with this issue. The only two things I can think of that could be the culprits are the CPU and the Motherboard. I don't really have backups lying around for either of them and if the problem was indeed with one of these, I think it would be safer to invest in new equipment considering how old they are. What do you guys think?
Here are my specs:
Please let me know if I forgot any details. Any help you can give me is highly appreciated. Thank you very much.
It started turning itself off occasionally about a month ago without a blue screen or any other warning. I couldn't pinpoint a particular reason because it would happen at any time. While playing games, watching a movie, even when idling. After a while, it got worse and I noticed a pattern forming. I would turn it on and it would either shut down during the "Starting Windows" screen or it would log into my Windows user and then immediately shut down. It would do this once or twice and then it would work for a few hours before shutting down abruptly again.
Yesterday, it reached what I'm hoping is the worst it can get. It goes to the "Starting Windows" screen and turns off there every single time. I tried booting in Safe Mode but that has the same result. Can't get past this screen at all. Sometimes, I'm given the opportunity to run the Startup Repair tool which, if it doesn't turn off during that, will scan my system for about 15 minutes and then tell me it cannot fix the problem. I can review a detailed diagnostic report which shows a bunch of successful scans and a failed one. Here's a picture of the results.
The system has run well for over a year now. During this time period, I haven't changed any components whatsoever. No overclocking done either. I occasionally open it up and clean it of dust and I did that again as soon as the shutdown issue started manifesting itself. Here's a few other things (in no particular order) that I've tried in the hopes of fixing this issue:
■ pull out all cables, hold power button to discharge capacitors
■ clear CMOS
■ try another wall socket, different power strips, new power cord
■ replace PSU with guaranteed functional one
■ fresh OS installation
■ use new SATA cables for HDDs
■ test one HDD plugged in at a time (I have 2)
■ try a different, guaranteed functional HDD
■ remove HDDs entirely
■ replace Video Card with guaranteed functional one
■ remove Video Card entirely (use on-board)
■ remove DVD R/RW
■ remove Card Reader
■ unplug Front USB panel
■ switch RAM sticks in different configuration (I have 4)
■ try each RAM stick individually in every slot
■ boot from Live OS DVD
There is one strange exception. It will boot an old disc I have burned with Ultimate Boot CD 4 WinBuilder. It has a Windows-like environment with diagnostic tools (among other things). I ran it and took a screenshot of the temperatures and voltages from SpeedFan, here's a screenshot of that. I also looked at the PC Health Stats in BIOS and took a screenshot there as well, here it is. The temperatures look good, in fact they're not very different from what I usually had when the system ran fine. I check regularly since I had a faulty GPU fan in the past.
I'm at my wits end with this issue. The only two things I can think of that could be the culprits are the CPU and the Motherboard. I don't really have backups lying around for either of them and if the problem was indeed with one of these, I think it would be safer to invest in new equipment considering how old they are. What do you guys think?
Here are my specs:
■ Motherboard: Acer MCP61SM-AM Socket AM2
■ PSU: FSP Blue Storm II 400W
■ CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ 2.1GHz Brisbane Skt AM2
■ GPU: Sapphire ATI Radeon HD4830 512MB DDR3 256-bit
■ RAM: 4x Transcend 1GB DDR2 667MHz
■ HDD #1: Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache
■ HDD #2: Hitachi Deskstar 250GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache
■ OS: Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64
Please let me know if I forgot any details. Any help you can give me is highly appreciated. Thank you very much.
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