Normally, I'd chalk this up to a bad PSU, but it seems deeper than that.

My Antec Neo 500 HE ran my system beautifully, but had a loud fan so I bought another to replace it. But before I installed it, I wanted to clean the wires in my case up a bit so I took everything out, cleaned up the wires, and put everything back in. I started the system and after it posted, it shut down. I started it up again. Same story. No matter how many times I did it, it would shut down before Windows started to boot. So I installed my original PSU. Noisy, yes, but it booted windows just fine. I ran tests and benchmarks and everything checked out OK like before. BUT after 15 min or so on Prime 95 and CPU burn-in running simultaneously (100% load) my computer shuts down again (but the keyboard lights stay on, strangely). The original never did that before. It would go for hours on end running both programs.

What the hell could be wrong? Could both PSU's be bad? The original didn't have a problem until I took everything out and put it all back in.

<font color=blue><i><b>Ride the Pig, Gir!</b></i></font color=blue>
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by krazynutz on 11/03/05 01:36 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

I bet it's related to replacing everything.
Check if you connected everything properly?

yeah, everything shows up in windows just fine and works just fine. I've unplugged, replugged, and switched ports on the PSU (it has the plugs rather than wires coming straight out. I just stopped home for lunch and sure enough, my computer was off. God knows when because I don't get any errors. Even Windows doesn't say it's recovered from a serious error when I start it back up. Problem is, I've never witnessed it shut down. I don't know if a program is doing it. Temps are awesome. My CPU doesn't get over 42c at 100% load and idles around 27c. Mobo never gets above 32c.

<font color=blue><i><b>Ride the Pig, Gir!</b></i></font color=blue>

Checked event viewer? Are you logging?

*Steam rising*
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BUNNY STEW FOR DINNER!!

Never used it before, but I found it under Administrative Tools. Pretty cool. I'll check it out tonight. Any ideas what might be causing it to just shut off like that? Could it be the mobo not playing nicely? Maybe while running the wires I chipped/snagged/broke somthing on it? I've noticed my system does take a bit longer to boot up now and the HDD light has a steady/constant (not intermittent) flicker during the windows boot screen.

<font color=blue><i><b>Ride the Pig, Gir!</b></i></font color=blue>

You could get something like this <A HREF="http://www.denguru.com/2005/11/03/gizmos_galore/page4.html" target="_new">ATX PSU Tester</A> to test the PSUs. I wouldn't think it would be the PSU, but I would check and recheck all the power connections. You can also disable the auto reboot/shutdown for windows. It should give you a BSOD instead.

*Steam rising*
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I know I should know this, but how do you disable auto restart/shutdown?

Also, what bothers me is that the one power supply wouldn't even start to boot windows before it shut down and the other one does it randomly anywhere from 5 min to an hour or so (I'm guessing). Could faulty connections be a problem after that long? I mean, shouldn't that cause a problem when the computer turns on?

<font color=blue><i><b>Ride the Pig, Gir!</b></i></font color=blue>

wait... auto shutdown from windows is after POST and it may flash a blue screen for like 0.1 to 0.5 sec (you should be able to catch it)

if any of your connector are not well connected it won't even made it to POST...

So would it be broken wires in the middle? (I never had that scenario, but if it connects at the beginning and loosens after 5 mins, then...)

Auto restart/shutdown for blue screen is located at Control Panel| System| Advanced| Startup and Recovery (Settings... button)|System Failure


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(" )¥(" ) My bunny has dual channel genitals!

thanks. Aw crap. I feared the worst and it came true. My system shut itself down again under the stress tests (had a neighbor check on it) and I had him start it back up. I told him not to start the tests and see if it'll stay on just idling. Yep. It's still sittin'pretty after 2 hours while idling. So why would a 500W PSU (or two of them for that matter) shut down under stress? I'm not even OCing!

UPDATE: I just updated the BIOS before the PSU switch and haven't run any benchmarks till now. Could the BIOS be flakey?

UPDATE: Flashed BIOS. Didn't help. But ever since I started having problems, I've gotten the "Windows is running low on virtual memory" notification. I JUST installed windows! How can that be?

<font color=blue><i><b>Ride the Pig, Gir!</b></i></font color=blue>
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by krazynutz on 11/04/05 03:11 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

Ah ha!

It turns out it WAS the PSU. Friggin' POS Antec NeoHE 500! I really DID have TWO bad psu's. Got myself an Antec NeoPower 480 and that thing is sweeet. Rock solid performance and I finally get to overclock!

I wasn't the only one who had problems with the NeoHE 500. Someone on NewEgg bought two as well and both gave him the same exact problem. Bought his roughly around the same time so I'm guessing there was a bad batch or somethin'.

make sure you dont have a short somewhere.. did you unscrew anything when u took everythin gout? cheeck all ur screws... makes ure u dont have any sittin loosely!

No shorts. It had to have been two bad PSU's. Both bad ones were NeoHE 500's. They both randomly turned my computer off. The guy on NewEgg had bought two that did the same thing to him. Once I replaced the 2nd bad PSU with a NeoPower 480, all my problems disappeared and I got to OC. My X2 3800 is 24-hour rock solid at 2.5Ghz with my DDR @ 1:1 with 2.5-3-3-6 timings. Good stuff Scoring 93,250 in AquaMark3 with a 7800GT.

Thanks everyone for their help!

now we know not to buy that pos