Broken PSU, or something else?

Thrax

Thrax

Thrax

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Joined
19 Mar 2004
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420
Location
Cheshire
I'll try to keep this brief. My PC is normally on 24/7, and has been more or less fine until it started randomly freezing. I put this down to the hot weather we were having and left my PC off for a day. Next day I try to turn it on and get something along the lines of 'disk error detected, press ctrl+alt+del to restart'. After a few hours I try to boot again and it works, but only for about half a day.

I tried putting in an older harddrive with Windows 98 installed and that crashed in more or less the same way after a short while. I tried to boot from the Windows XP CD and that crashes before letting me try to install. I also swapped various bits of memory around, but to no avail. It currently will not get past trying to load Windows, and on the occations that it does, it crashes on the log in screen.

I can't test my PSU as I don't have another PC to try it in, or a spare PSU to use in place of it. It's an Antec TruePower PSU, and the PC and all the parts are just over 2 years old.
 
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Hi, I would have said HD at first, but you said that you changed it for an older HD and it still crashed. HAve you tried changing the cable connecting the HD to the Mobo to rule out a faulty cable.

I would then say that it is RAM failing, as I had a P4 which wouldn't boot into windows after the screen of boot options, then I tried using a CD based Linux and it refused to boot that, so turned out to be the one RAM stick dead, as everything booted great after.

When you say moved RAM around, what you mean, you tried different sticks or just running 1 stick at a time in different slots in different configurations. Also how much RAM have you got, and what Specs is the PC. Try running memtest if you can and see if you get any errors.

More info on system be nice, as I don't think the PSU would be the sole cause of this problem, more RAM or HD related.

Anthony
 
acharris said:
When you say moved RAM around, what you mean, you tried different sticks or just running 1 stick at a time in different slots in different configurations. Also how much RAM have you got, and what Specs is the PC. Try running memtest if you can and see if you get any errors.

More info on system be nice, as I don't think the PSU would be the sole cause of this problem, more RAM or HD related.
Click to expand...

I have 1 gig of ram in total, two sticks of 256 and one 512. I tried taking two of them out at a time, and trying the remaining stick in different slots. It's an AMD 2500+, 1 gig of ram, 160 gig Samsung SATA hard drive and GeForce 6800. I'll try a different cable and running memtest soon though, thanks.
 
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Do you have another graphics card to try? I had a problem with a card once that caused all sorts of errors you wouldn't think would be related.
 
ajm said:
Do you have another graphics card to try? I had a problem with a card once that caused all sorts of errors you wouldn't think would be related.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't think it was graphics card related, as I recently replaced it so it's fairly new, but I'll try an old PCI one I have lying around and see if it makes any difference, thanks.

Bumping for more suggestions, can anyone think of anything else it might be? :)
 
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