End of Lifespan or Faulty Component?

n-dru

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Nov 10, 2009
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Hi all,

My younger brother has my old PC which I bought some 7 to 8 years ago. First gen dual core (Intel Pentium D 4.3 Ghz) and some DDR or DDR2 memory (1GB). Mobo was changed to a low-end Asrock a few years back, and it has a deidated 8600GT. Generic cheap PSU.

It has lived through multiple blue screens, crashes, reinstalls and the like but lately it has been giving me (or my brother to be honest..) some trouble - here's the deal:

Boot up - and immediately I notice somthing's wrong - all the BIOS text and messages and even the Windows logo is fuzzy, and as soon as it boots to Windows it flashes a quick BSOD (can't even get to read the error) and enter a reboot loop.

Now this looks like a hardware issue, but before I strip out everything does anyone have some pointers? I think I can rule out overheating since it does this even on a cold boot.. maybe RAM sticks got fudged up and they just need to be re-inserted.. or the PSU's freaking out?
 

Chaz21

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Mar 6, 2012
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That would be the first place to look...it cost nothing.
"Generic cheap PSU. " Not good at all.
Try resetting the cmos if you haven't yet.
And yes there's still life in that "old timer" and sadly it probably is at the end of it's life span (at least as far as far as minor upgrades goes).
 

n-dru

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Nov 10, 2009
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OK good to have someone share the same view - and yes cheapy PSU = my bad.

I always recommend branded/top-notch PSUs but it felt like a waste on this bunch of old hardware.