My pc (in sig) has started randomly dying on me. It started a couple of weeks ago and at first I thought it was under high temps as I it had under full load at the time. Been running with the side panel off the case, no difference. A couple of mornings age my wife was listening to some internet radio and I heard that all too familiar POST-beep as it rebooted.
Tonight it cut out on me twice (no reboot, just died,) when I was only typing some stuff up in Word, so not exactly taxing it. It's now been running fine for about the past two and a half hours with just more Word and email and surfing.....
When it dies, there's no warning - the screen goes blank with no output from the graphics, but the cpu, graphics and PSU fans are still spinning. Some times it reboots, most of the time it doesn't.
Hitting the reset button doesn't make it restart, the DVD and HDD lights flash, but there's no POST activity. I'm not sure if the HDD is spinning (don't hear it spin up, but it's silent under the noise of the fans when it's running.) All the fans still run.
Doing a hard restart doesn't always solve it either. If it's been under load I normally have to leave it a minute or so before retrying, if not under load, it normally posts and reboots straight away. If it's been under load, it doesn't always even get back to the desktop before it happens again, and sometimes it will take three or four goes to get running again (sometimes with a bit of a wait between attempts, seems to help.
So, all a bit random really!
Any thoughts on the cause? At first I suspected the graphics card might be on its way out since all the lights, fans etc were still on, but I'm guessing it's more likely the motherboard or power supply?
(I know it's a naff old system, but it's what I have to live with right now!)
Tonight it cut out on me twice (no reboot, just died,) when I was only typing some stuff up in Word, so not exactly taxing it. It's now been running fine for about the past two and a half hours with just more Word and email and surfing.....
When it dies, there's no warning - the screen goes blank with no output from the graphics, but the cpu, graphics and PSU fans are still spinning. Some times it reboots, most of the time it doesn't.
Hitting the reset button doesn't make it restart, the DVD and HDD lights flash, but there's no POST activity. I'm not sure if the HDD is spinning (don't hear it spin up, but it's silent under the noise of the fans when it's running.) All the fans still run.
Doing a hard restart doesn't always solve it either. If it's been under load I normally have to leave it a minute or so before retrying, if not under load, it normally posts and reboots straight away. If it's been under load, it doesn't always even get back to the desktop before it happens again, and sometimes it will take three or four goes to get running again (sometimes with a bit of a wait between attempts, seems to help.
So, all a bit random really!
Any thoughts on the cause? At first I suspected the graphics card might be on its way out since all the lights, fans etc were still on, but I'm guessing it's more likely the motherboard or power supply?
(I know it's a naff old system, but it's what I have to live with right now!)
