Hi
I recently had trouble with my pc - it froze totally while I had my pda attached to it and there was a strange burning smell. I couldn't even turn it off by holding down the power button and had to use the switch on the back of the PSU.
I then couldn't get it to post at all. Fans on, drives spun up but no bleep. I disconnected all the USB peripherals (I though it might have been the PDA connection so unplugged my hub). It still wouldn't start up so I just switched it off at the mains for a while. When I reattached the mains lead and flicked the PSU switch the pc booted up without me touching the power button (This was repeatable for a while - I tried flicking the PSU switch and it would boot up by itself.. but now it doesn't do it). It froze on the "loading windows" screen and on reset it loaded into XP. I then kept getting "power surge on hub port" messages despite not having any USB peripherals attached. I disabled the USB ports in the bios and this stopped the messages.
Anyway the burning smell, random switching on and power surge messages led me to look at the PSU. I have a Tagan TG480-U01 I got from Overclockers early last year. With the PC off but PSU main switch on I can hear what sounds like faint electrical arcing. I have heard something about "ticking Tagans" but don't know whether this is ticking. Would a failing PSU give these symptoms? Why the switching on by itself and the USB issues? I plugged and unplugged my pda from its cradle several times before the burning smell - could that have maybe damaged the USB circuitry on the mobo and the PSU issue be another matter entirely?
Thanks for any assistance
I have a MSI Neo2 S478 MB, P4 3.0 Prescott and 1.5Gb Crucial memory running XP Pro SP2
I recently had trouble with my pc - it froze totally while I had my pda attached to it and there was a strange burning smell. I couldn't even turn it off by holding down the power button and had to use the switch on the back of the PSU.
I then couldn't get it to post at all. Fans on, drives spun up but no bleep. I disconnected all the USB peripherals (I though it might have been the PDA connection so unplugged my hub). It still wouldn't start up so I just switched it off at the mains for a while. When I reattached the mains lead and flicked the PSU switch the pc booted up without me touching the power button (This was repeatable for a while - I tried flicking the PSU switch and it would boot up by itself.. but now it doesn't do it). It froze on the "loading windows" screen and on reset it loaded into XP. I then kept getting "power surge on hub port" messages despite not having any USB peripherals attached. I disabled the USB ports in the bios and this stopped the messages.
Anyway the burning smell, random switching on and power surge messages led me to look at the PSU. I have a Tagan TG480-U01 I got from Overclockers early last year. With the PC off but PSU main switch on I can hear what sounds like faint electrical arcing. I have heard something about "ticking Tagans" but don't know whether this is ticking. Would a failing PSU give these symptoms? Why the switching on by itself and the USB issues? I plugged and unplugged my pda from its cradle several times before the burning smell - could that have maybe damaged the USB circuitry on the mobo and the PSU issue be another matter entirely?
Thanks for any assistance
I have a MSI Neo2 S478 MB, P4 3.0 Prescott and 1.5Gb Crucial memory running XP Pro SP2
Last edited:
