Sudden Shutdowns - Can't Restart

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Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt (More info?)

For the last couple of days my WinXP Home computer has been shutting
down on its own. When this happens everything looks normal and then
suddenly without noise of any kind, the screen is black and the
machine is unresponsive.

This has gotten progressively worse over the last 24 hours. At first
the machiine was usable for an hour or so. Now it happens during
startup. The Windows logo appears as normal, but immediately after it
finishes a blue screen appears for an instant and then the monitor
goes black before the blue screen can br read. On a subsequent
attempt, Checkdisk started and was verifying Drive C when the crash
occurred again. Since then when I try to start up, the monitor LED
continues to blink indicating that the monitor is turned on but the
computer isn't doing anything and the screen stays black.

Spontaneous shutdowns occurred back at the beginning of August. That
was solved with a good cleaning out of a lot of accumulated dust and a
new Antec True Power 400 power supply.

This time I opened the case and saw that there was some dust which I
cleaned out. All connections seem secure. CPU temp was 43c.

I don't think this is a virus/worm,etc. I run Norton A/V with
up-to-date definitions, Zone Alarm Pro, and Spysweeper.I,m also behind
the firewall built into the router and am running WinXP Home SP2.

On one of the successful boot-ups I got the "Windows has recovered
from a serious error message". This led to an MS web page suggesting
that the problem might relate to iomdisk.sys, an Iomega driver related
to a zip drive. I had uninstalled this drive and its software during
the August episode, but this driver stayed behind and had not caused a
problem as far as I can tell. However, when I managed to start
entering safe mode,I could see the various drivers being loaded. The
process stops when iomdisk.sys is reached.The hard disk activity light
continues but nothing further happens.

I tried running Memtest when I could still see the screen. It ran for
about 5 minutes, getting to test 23, pass 4, then seemed to stall. It
showed no errors to that point.

My machine:
FIC MB with onboard Raid 0.

AMD Athlon 2100.

A gig of Ram ( 2 512MB sticks)

Two WD 120 gig drives connected to the raid connectors.These drives
contain data. Another WD 120 gig drive for windows and programs. A
fourth WD 120 gig drive for backup.

Internal Plextor CDRW. External Sony DvD+/- RW. Maxtor one touch 250
gig for more backup.

What do I do?
 
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Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt (More info?)

"Dave Wilson" <dwilson1@optonline.net> wrote in message
news:mtito0l6jbo8dcupqo1tgrsdpcsg8eohc3@4ax.com...
> For the last couple of days my WinXP Home computer has been shutting
> down on its own. When this happens everything looks normal and then
> suddenly without noise of any kind, the screen is black and the
> machine is unresponsive.
>
> This has gotten progressively worse over the last 24 hours. At first
> the machiine was usable for an hour or so. Now it happens during
> startup. The Windows logo appears as normal, but immediately after it
> finishes a blue screen appears for an instant and then the monitor
> goes black before the blue screen can br read.

That is a classic symptom of a failing power supply. NOTE: I don't know if
your power supply is bad. But if my machine was acting that way, I'd
definitely REPLACE the power supply, before I even thought to try anything
else. -Dave