PC turning off (powering off) randomly? But can't find why... tested a few things...

Stormster

Stormster

Stormster

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Hi guys, as title. PC is just an emachines thing of my dads... been fine for years.

Then he said it keeps turning off after a few mins... then power back on and it tries to do a startup repair (Vista Home Prem) but sits there until you reset...

Anyways I just assumed PSU, but I'm not too sure now. Because, I left it sitting in the BIOS for hours and it was fine. So I thought maybe it's when it's accessing the hard drive (160 gig hitatchi) and something is going wrong to cause it to turn off.

Anyways seeing as it sat fine in the BIOS I then ran memtest86+ for a bit, all good no errors and no powering down.

So then I ran Seatools in DOS mode to test the hard drive, short tests, long tests, acoustic tests...and still no powering off. But, let it load windows and sometimes it's ok for a bit but sometimes it powers off when loading, or when you've been in windows a few mins... so quite confused :-S

Any ideas peeps? He wants to upgrade it anyway but I was thinking new PSU, new HD and 4 gig of ram and Windows 7 to tide him over for a bit... but still intrigued to whats causing this.

Thanks :)
 
is it temperature related? check the heatsink is seated properly and the fan is running (and that it's clean) - run core temp and see what the temps are before it turns off...

failing that, it could well be a GPU issue, or maybe just conflicting drivers - let it boot into safe mode and see if it still dies
 
Good point about safe mode, will try that. Just strange how it only turns off when loading windows or within windows (normal mode).

Everything is onboard, so will have check what mobo is in there, quite a simple system all in all, AMD Athlon 4000+ I think, 2x512mb ddr2 which has tested fine, 160gb hitatchi HD (ugh lol crap make anyway), Samsung DVDRW... Fan is running and clean, temps are fine in BIOS. I will get coretemp and run that also, thanks :)
 
also try booting without the dvdrw plugged in and see if it has the same effect? see if it's anything to do with that...

if you're able to, try booting with a gfx card and turn the onboard off? that'll discount that as a factor if it still happens?
 
Try removing motherboard power plugs and reconnecting them. Seriously. I had a similar problem, and it turned out my 24-pin atx wasn;t sitting quite right! It used to drive me nuts until I decided to do something about it. When it got hot or the temperature rose, the pins would lost contact and switch the machine off!
 
I have exactly the same issue with my HTPC (powers off completely when loading or when just finished loading Windows). I reseated the RAM and this seemed to do the trick for a while (more than a week) but it's back to it's usual tricks again. I might need to investigate further. I'd be interested if you find a solution.
 
If you're going to replace the PSU anyway I'd try that first. BIOS isn't really giving it any stress, so that could mask the problem.
 
Actually we've just had a power cut. My other half was watching the TV when it happened and he says that the HTPC went off with a pop. So maybe it is a power issue? It's a good quality Seasonic so I'd be quite surprised.
 
Right I am gonna have another look at it today.

First things first, just tried loading into safe mode. Turns itself off consistently every time it's trying to load. The odd thing about it is, let me explain it properly lol.. when you manually shut down your PC, have you noticed your mouse optical light go off, then the keyboard lights all flash once before turning off?

Well, this happens on the machine just before it turns itself off, and it hasn't even been getting IN to safe mode, just the loading drivers list page. Strange?! I've noticed it sits at a bluetooth driver before switching off.

Gonna go off and try all the suggestions now :) Will post back soon. Certainly quite odd, the fact the mouse optical light goes off and keyboard lights flash suggest something is telling it to turn off? I was thinking sticking power button etc but seems fine, will reseat all the mobo headers though also.
 
As a sidenote I've reseated everything on the mobo, reset the BIOS, disconnected DVD drive, and now it won't even load windows lol just turns off as soon as it starts to load... pretty weird, machine hasn't even been on the net for weeks so no windows updates either. Want try get it into windows so run coretemp but in the BIOS it's sitting pretty low at like 10-20 degrees! lol
 
Stormster said:
As a sidenote I've reseated everything on the mobo, reset the BIOS, disconnected DVD drive, and now it won't even load windows lol just turns off as soon as it starts to load... pretty weird, machine hasn't even been on the net for weeks so no windows updates either. Want try get it into windows so run coretemp but in the BIOS it's sitting pretty low at like 10-20 degrees! lol
Click to expand...

LOL you've gone from bad to worse. I await with interest to see what you find. I don't dare mess on with my HTPC while it's working (for the time being) since it is used to record TV.
 
It's certainly odd. I've just left it running seatools in DOS since I last posted, and it's fine? lol it must be something to do with Windows, it turns off with normal start up, starting in safe mode, in "repair your computer" mode as was gonna check system restore checkpoints see whats listed... it's really weird. The only obvious thing which stood out with safe mode loading was it always turns off at a bluetooth driver dll. Wonder if thats the culprit, but still you'd imagine I'd be able access system restore etc?
 
Right the file it's hanging on is: bthidmgr.sys

If you google it, it's quite a problematic file! I bet this is the problem so gonna try remove it somehow just to see how the machine behaves, if it's good I will get a new PSU anyway and 4gb ram and upgrade it to win 7 fresh install stylee anyway :)
 
Well this was/is an odd one.

New PSU, new RAM, new HD... here's me thinking yup will be fine now.

Went to install Win 7, and it turns off as soon as you get to the welcome screen for the install!

Anyways I looked in the card reader and noticed the pins were all bent for the CF card slot... so thought maybe it's shorting and turning the thing off. Disconnected that from the mobo, same. So again disconnected everything, including the HD! And just ran the setup off the CD again and yet again it powered off.

So must be the motherboard... gonna buy a new case, mobo and CPU and then me old man has a new base unit and put this down to an odd unsolvable problem lol
 
Could it be a "short" on the motherboard itself - is it grounding anywhere on the case?
Check the motherboard screws are still secure. Failing that take the mobo out and check the brass standoffs are fitted securely, then re-assemble.

Random hardware failures are hard-to-fix, imho, but you've only got the mobo or processor left to replace. Good Luck.
 
I will check that but he's happy pay for a new base unit regardless, was just trying to save him a few quid. But I can keep the old stuff so if I can get the thing working properly I can sell it for a few quid for myself :) Will have a mess about next weekend.
 
Right, my HTPC just turned itself off right in the middle of watching a recorded TV program (completely turned off, no BSOD). About 30 minutes earlier it had BSODed with a 'driver IRQL not less or equal' error. When I turned it back on again, it totally turned itself off as it was loading Windows. To resolve this, I unclipped 1 side of both sticks of RAM, and then pushed them back in again. It then booted fine.

So the next step for me seems to be swapping the DDR2 RAM in the HTPC for some other RAM and see what happens.

Any thoughts from anyone? Is this more likely a RAM or motherboard problem, or is it impossible to say? Going to be a bit more difficult to solve this than I thought as I don't have any spare DDR2 RAM knocking around.
 
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Hard to say... have you ran memtest86 for a few hours? Usually a solid test and if you have any errors I'd say it's accurate in it's results.
 
I still haven't got to the bottom of this with my HTPC. It'll occassionally blue screen, it'll occassionally swith itself off while booting, and it'll also switch itself off while performing a Windows 7 Startup Repair (which it automatically does following the initial failed booted). I'm running Memtest86 as we speak to see if the single stick of RAM in there throws up any errors. Short of that, I'm stumped!
 
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