Help fixing a PC

rory12

rory12

rory12

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Joined
16 Nov 2009
Posts
102
Location
Glasgow
Hello everyone, got a PC from a mate here that I'm trying to fix and I need some help because I'm tearing my hair out here.

When I boot up the PC it gets to the Windows XP splash screen and looks like its about to boot up but about 5 seconds into that it shuts itself off. I opened it up and I've never seen a PC so dusty in my whole life, so got the trusty old hoover out and sorted that - still wouldn't boot up.

I then went into safe mode, cleaned 1230 (yes you read that right, 1230) malware/viruses. Figured it might work after that so restarted it and tried to boot in to XP, same thing happened. After that I tried to do a system restore back to July, also didn't work.

I formatted it and tried to install Windows XP on it, it would get to the point where it says something like 'Installing Windows approx 37 mins left' and then it would shut down again. Tried it with Windows 7 and it shut itself down at the bit where it asks you to choose a language, region.

I thought it must have been a hardware issue at this point, so first of all I swapped in a PSU that I knew was working and it would still shut down at XP splash screen. Tried the same with the RAM and hard drive, all still failed to boot into Windows.

Could it be the motherboard or something else?

I appreciate all of your input, thanks.
 
Could be the motherboard or cpu, especially as you hae tried the ram, psu. Oh, gpu have tried swoping that out what is the spec of the machine.
 
Using motherboards onboard graphics.

Would the CPU still boot if it was broke? I was under the impression that the PC wouldn't even turn on but I'm probably wrong.

Whats really got me confused is how could I get into safe mode fine (everything seemed to be working well) but I couldn't get into normal Windows or install Windows? grrrr.
 
Can't help Thinking it's gpu related as it, as you say, works ok in Safe mode. Do you have a discrete graphics card you could try? Or did you already try that?
 
The best thing to do is to isolate the components and that way eliminate possible causes for the non-working PC. What I do when a mate brings round there PC to me to sort.

I would start with the things that are really easy to sort. Like hard drive. Does the PC boot into any OS if you swap the hard drive out.

I have a notebook sitting here that does the exact same thing and I know that the hard drive is knackered. Hope it is not the case for you mind, but the similarity is quite startling.
 
Its a process of elimination im afraid. If you got some friends with similar specs you could always swap bit out from theirs and isolate the problem.
 
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