- Nov 26, 2010
- 15
- 0
- 18,510
I've had my computer for close to 7 years now, and this morning I turned it on normally. While using the computer, it shut off and starting rebooting. It wouldn't ever complete post, but kept restarting itself.
Here's the details of what I know:
Last night I didn't completely turn off the system, but put it to sleep.
This morning when it failed, I had Firefox, iTunes, and MS word open.
The rebooting isn't always at the same point in the boot process. Sometimes it is very sudden. When I leave the computer alone for a few minutes, it seems to cool down because when i try again, it may get further in the process. On a couple occasions, I've gotten it to POST to a screen where it asks me if I want to boot in safe mode or a few other modes. from that screen I've tried booting normally, the windows loading screen appears and it'll fail and continue its restarting loop.
At some point during that POST attempt, I caught a glimpse that the RAM was successfully detected. So I'm assuming it's not the problem.
All of this so far has made me think it could be (1) PSU or (2) the motherboard.
The second time I got it past POST, it said I needed to select a bootable drive and restart. This really threw me off and makes me think my drives have failed. I didn't build this system myself, but it looks like I've got 2 drives in RAID 0.
When I got to thinking about it, a motherboard or PSU problem could mean the drives aren't properly detected. So the drives are on my radar as a possible problem, but still not as likely as the PSU or MOBO.
I'm going to go about finding the problem by buying new parts one at a time. I'm going to start with the PSU because it's an easier replacement than the MOBO. (The only reason I'm buying the parts and testing this way is because I am a couple months away from buying a new computer I've got planned to build, and I figure I could buy the parts for the new computer one at a time and find out the problem while slowly buying the new computer. I guess I risk ruining my new parts while troubleshooting. Maybe it's not such a good idea.)
Any and all insights and tips would be awesome before I get into the troubleshooting process.
Here's the details of what I know:
Last night I didn't completely turn off the system, but put it to sleep.
This morning when it failed, I had Firefox, iTunes, and MS word open.
The rebooting isn't always at the same point in the boot process. Sometimes it is very sudden. When I leave the computer alone for a few minutes, it seems to cool down because when i try again, it may get further in the process. On a couple occasions, I've gotten it to POST to a screen where it asks me if I want to boot in safe mode or a few other modes. from that screen I've tried booting normally, the windows loading screen appears and it'll fail and continue its restarting loop.
At some point during that POST attempt, I caught a glimpse that the RAM was successfully detected. So I'm assuming it's not the problem.
All of this so far has made me think it could be (1) PSU or (2) the motherboard.
The second time I got it past POST, it said I needed to select a bootable drive and restart. This really threw me off and makes me think my drives have failed. I didn't build this system myself, but it looks like I've got 2 drives in RAID 0.
When I got to thinking about it, a motherboard or PSU problem could mean the drives aren't properly detected. So the drives are on my radar as a possible problem, but still not as likely as the PSU or MOBO.
I'm going to go about finding the problem by buying new parts one at a time. I'm going to start with the PSU because it's an easier replacement than the MOBO. (The only reason I'm buying the parts and testing this way is because I am a couple months away from buying a new computer I've got planned to build, and I figure I could buy the parts for the new computer one at a time and find out the problem while slowly buying the new computer. I guess I risk ruining my new parts while troubleshooting. Maybe it's not such a good idea.)
Any and all insights and tips would be awesome before I get into the troubleshooting process.
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