Booting & CPU temp?

[aCiD_bUrN99]

My system does something very weird. If you shut it down for apporximately 15mins, about enough time for everything to come to room temperature. If you then go to turn it on, the fans spin for a qurter of a second and stop and the power light goes off with the fans. Now you must turn off the main power switch in order to use the front power button again.

Now, if you continue to repeat this process for 20 minutes, each time you do it the fans will spin for a slightly longer time, eventually it will stay on. Then you must wipe out the BIOS and it will boot fine.

Does anyone know what would make this happen? Or have a potential solution?

System Info:
Abit VP6
Dual 1Ghz PIII @ 1.08Ghz (144FSB)
Dual IBM 40GB on RAID 0
2x256MB DIMMs
ATI Radeon 7000
Riva TNT 16MB
SB Live Platinum
D-Link NIC
Realtek NIC
DVD-Rom
CD-Writer

This system has been running perfectly for about a year. For apparently no reason this has started happening. The processors have always run at 45C (CPU 1) and 42C (CPU2) at full load.

 

[Stiffler]

Hmmm and you haven't actually mentioned the PSU >? That would be my first port of call with an issue like that :/ Although it does sound like the capicitors are not carrying enough charge to kick start the system, I don't really have a clue what is going on there !

Tim

<font color=blue>Its winter now... So how come my CPU temp is still </font color=blue><b><font color=red>55C</font color=red></b>

 

[Grub]

Sounds like a PS issue. ATX power supplies have a sensing lead that ensures adequate power is supplied to the MOBO before lighting off the CPU (its the "power good" lead. If this doesn't happen in the right amount of time, the PS can shut down. It sounds like this is what's happening to you. As for your experience with turning power on and off repeatedly...hmmm...don't really have a good answer for that one. It could be that every time you start it you are charging a critical capacitor a little bit more before it shuts down. Eventually enough accumulated charge would be there for the next power cycle to push it over the edge of the "power good" threshold. Or it could be gremlins...never can tell with computers. swap out the power supply and see how that works.

...ummm...sorry, I forgot what I was going to say...

 

[aCiD_bUrN99]

Now that you guys do bring up the PS and capacitor idea, it makes sense. This is a real nice system, in a not so nice case.... with a not so high end PSU. But I have disconnected all device power connectors except of course for the mobo, and it persists to do the same thing so the capacitor concept is intersting.

The capacitor idea also makes sense because if I turn on the main switch and leave it for a while before pressing the digital 'on' switch it will spin for about 1 second, as opposed to the extremely short 1/4 of a second.

Also, when you guys talk of capacitors, do you mean on the mobo, or in the PS?

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by aCiD_bUrN99 on 12/18/02 12:35 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[aCiD_bUrN99]

OK, I have solved the elusive not booting problem. I was at school and thought I'd see if there was a spare ATX PS laying around, luckily there was, and I tested it there before rteturning home. This was a 250W PS from a Compaq, not enough to run the comp on stably but enough to test.

So I come home, stick it in, starts up beautifully like nothing ever happened. It was indeed the PS.

Now here's the AMAZING part... While removing the old PS, I read the label that was hidden on the top of it. MUCH to my surprise it said max 165W!!! I had been running this comp on a 165W PS for a year. No wonder I always was crashing and windows was dieing and there was infinite corruptions in windows resultant of bad writes and reads.....

Well now I'm happpy that it works, and mad that some ass sold me a 165 with my comp, damn well knowing what I was putting in it.

Thanks for your help everyone.

-Brad

 

[Stiffler]

No problem... A great many number of issues can be traced back to inadequate or poor quality power supplies !

People must learn to buy good quality power supplies with the same sort of importance as a good motherboard....

Tim

<font color=blue>Its winter now... So how come my CPU temp is still </font color=blue><b><font color=red>55C</font color=red></b>