How to troubleshoot a problem?

[rlasker3]

I'm at a loss on how to pinpoint my problem. In February I put together (with help from this forum) a custom system:

Abit IS7
P4 2.6
1 GB Corsair PC3200 (2 x 512)
ATI Radeon 9200 PRO

Everything has been working great up until about a week ago or so. The computer just locks up for a few seconds and then the screens display the monitor default "No Signal" messages.

That's it. No indicators, no beeps, no rebooting and no messages in the OS system to point to likely problems (event viewer etc). I manually reboot and it works fine for a bit.

I'm guessing it is a hardware problem without any real confidence. What can I do or use to try and diagnose any hardware problems to at least rule it out.

 

[ChipDeath]

if I had to guess, I'd shoot for a failing Power Supply.

Use something like Motherboard monitor 5 to log Volts to a file every few seconds. That way you'll be able to see if any of them dropped just prior to crashing - an indication that you need a new PSU.

You could also try downloading something like Memtest86 to check your memory isn't at fault, although it doesn't really sound like it to me.

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Epox 8RDA+ V1.1 w/ Custom NB HS
XP1700+ @200x10 (~2Ghz), 1.4 Vcore
2x256Mb Corsair PC3200LL/1x512Mb Corsair XMS PC4000 2.5-3-3-7
Sapphire 9800Pro (VGA Silencer Rev3) @418/742