mum switched off PC from power button

riamu

riamu

riamu

Associate
Joined
10 Sep 2003
Posts
930
My PC was running with a really nice screensaver running and my mum turned it off by holding down the power button.

I told her off but since then when the PC boots up, dotted white vertical lines appear down the page at the point where pc BOOTS up and you have option to press DEL to getr into the BIOS.

THe desktop appeared okay but some days after when playing 3D chess all the pieces were blurred and some days later the PC does not boot up. There are lights on the corsair RAM, but there is no picture and the monitor light just flashes.

So I ordered a new video card. THe old one was X850 XT agp 8x card and the new one was Sapphire HD3850 512MB agp 8x.

Despite the new video card the same problem occurred with no picture although all the fans etc booted up and there were activity lights on all 4 sticks of RAM.

I am not sure what to do. I have tried reseating RAM and have checked all connections.

Most importantly, there is no hard drive sound or activity when i press power button. Please help me. The system is:

DFI lanparty 875B motherboard
3.4 CGhz northwood CPU
2 Gb XMS 3200 LL Pro RAM
150 Gb Raptor Drive (10 000 rpm) SATA
DVD R, CD, DVD drives (3 in total)
Internal SATA scondary hitachi deskstar drive
Sapphire HD3850 512MB AGP 8x card
Asus Xonar PCI sound card.
Corsair 1000 W modular PSU
(Zalman flower cooler on PSU, copper)

I would appreciate your help since i do not want to lose this system which i spent a lot of money to build some years ago. (Thanks mum.....)
 
Last edited:
Can you get to the BIOS?, as you should be able to access it without having a HDD.

Things I'd try are putting in just one stick of RAM or clearing the CMOS, either by using the jumper pins or removing the battery for 30 seconds.

If none of these get you to the BIOS at least I'd say your mobo has died!
 
Do you have any other components you could swap in to try to isolate the problem?

My first thought was windows corrupted, but this wouldn't affect the bios screen, so I'm also voting for psu. Which model is it?
 
Sounds like a capacitor has gone in the PSU,

Talking of which, is your new PSU powerful enought for the 3850, its a hungry card.
 
Sound psu related, remove the power cable out the back, wait 10 seconds and plug it back in. Don't ask why but this sometimes works.

MW
 
Mr-White said:
Sound psu related, remove the power cable out the back, wait 10 seconds and plug it back in. Don't ask why but this sometimes works.

MW
Click to expand...

worked for me a few times with different problems, the other one is leave it unplugged over night.
strange for turning off the pc by pressing the power button causing this i know it can mess up windows and hdd's if they are transferring data ect but if it's a low spec make or not capable of running the system then it wouldn't take much to kill the psu

we could do with more info as to what psu you are using at the mo, make and spec like rating and amps, best bet is take a pic and post on here or a link to makers website
 
turning off the pc by the power button won't do anything to the system. it'll just give u message when u turn it back on saying about windows didn't shutdown in the normal way.

it sounds like a psu problem.
 
Personally I'd have gone with the graphics card too, but as you've changed it and I've read all the symptoms, it would seem the 12v rail has gone / is going in the PSU (the fans etc will fire up on the 5v rail, but the CPU and maybe graphics will need the 12v). Replace it with a decent one - the OCZ StealthXStream 600w on Overclockers seems a reasonable PSU/Price combination to me.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
hello again, i have a corsair 1000 W power supply and am using the adaptor from the new graphics card which is basically the the pin-type plug which plugs ntothe graphics card and leads out to 2 normal molexes (each with only 3 pins in it). So what I did was connect a normal molex from the PSU to each of these video card adaptor molexes.

I bought the new 1000 W corsair PSU many months ago and even though i don't need so much juice i love having nice components, my previous PSU was Globalwin Onyx 520 W PSU which was also a luxury part to own.

I thought the motherboard was okay due to activity lights on RAM.

I tried resetting BIOS switch many times and also removed the mobo battery but still no luck.

I have now disconnected the PC from the monitor and keybaord etc since I am awaiting someone to come and repair / have a look at it. But I thought meantime maybe i ought to buy a new CPU from an auction site, since northwood core cpus are not in vogue anymore i believe.

This was really a luxury PC for me so it's a shame. It could handle most things except Flight Simulator X in full resoultion.

It's easy to blame my mum but i feel guilty to keep doing this since i have powered it down trillions of time from the power button and it never blighted the machine.

When she powered it down a really detailed Shark Marine screensaver was running at 1600 x 1200 32bit and i am inclined to think that this has somehow blighted the system since the internal machinery was working hard to produce that screensaver.
 
Last edited:
riamu said:
It's easy to blame my mum but i feel guilty to keep doing this since i have powered it down trillions of time from the power button and it never blighted the machine.

When she powered it down a really detailed Shark Marine screensaver was running at 1600 x 1200 32bit and i am inclined to think that this has somehow blighted the system since the internal machinery was working hard to produce that screensaver.
Click to expand...
honesty mate turning off the pc by the power button when the screensaver is on won't do anything to the system. it "could" just mess up windows.
 
Everyone's saying PSU, but I don't see why this should be the PSU. For one thing, the system gets power and sometimes boots up. For another thing, turning off by the power button won't affect the PSU - it makes no difference. For a third thing, you have a quality 1000W PSU that's running about 200W of components.

gdaines said:
Personally I'd have gone with the graphics card too, but as you've changed it and I've read all the symptoms, it would seem the 12v rail has gone / is going in the PSU (the fans etc will fire up on the 5v rail, but the CPU and maybe graphics will need the 12v).
Click to expand...

Fans generally run from 12v, though.

Powering down from the power button won't damage any hardware. It might corrupt some data, but from the point of view of the hardware, it's not really any different from shutting down normally.

As the system doesn't boot, what I would be doing is stripping it down to a basic configuration. Have nothing connected apart from the graphics card and one stick of RAM. Disconnect all the drives and take out any PCI cards you have. If the system then boots, you can start tracking down the problem by connecting things one at a time.
 
Last edited:
I've shut my pc down with the power button lots of times due to crashes whilst gaming without a problem you must have just lucked out there :0
 
Mattus said:
As the system doesn't boot, what I would be doing is stripping it down to a basic configuration. Have nothing connected apart from the graphics card and one stick of RAM. Disconnect all the drives and take out any PCI cards you have. If the system then boots, you can start tracking down the problem by connecting things one at a time.
Click to expand...

That'll be impressive if it boots with all the drives disconnected as suggested :D:D I wonder if you mean 'if the system powers on', or whether you meant to say 'disconnect all optical drives and spare hard drives leaving just the OS hard drive'
 
gdaines said:
That'll be impressive if it boots with all the drives disconnected as suggested :D:D I wonder if you mean 'if the system powers on', or whether you meant to say 'disconnect all optical drives and spare hard drives leaving just the OS hard drive'
Click to expand...

I meant 'powers on' or 'POSTs' instead of 'boots' :D
 
unplug power cable from pc and press power button on front. Lights should come on for about a millisecond, this draws power from all the capacitators. Plug back in and see if that works :)
 
gareth170 said:
honesty mate turning off the pc by the power button when the screensaver is on won't do anything to the system. it "could" just mess up windows.
Click to expand...
+1
I think you just hit a faulty age related problem with one of your components rather than the powering off being the cause

Agree with Mattus, disconnect everything bar the very basics and see if it powers up
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom