4 months and it still isnt working

[Dr HaxZaw]

ok guys ive gotten desperate so i figured id ask here as it seemed as good a place as any:

about 5 months ago my computer blew a power supply, got a new one. a month later it blew that one so got a bigger power supply. then it just wouldnt start or respond at all. new motherboard, processor and ram. then it would shut down as soon as it started windows and seeing as the computer bloke had it run for 2 days at his place without a problem he reckoned it was the power in the house. moved house in january and its still doing it so got a new harddrive and video card. still had the problem. changed how the motherboard was reading the hard drive and it lasted 2 days before it was stuffed again. now it has a new motherboard and its still stuffed.

The problem is that it will just shut down and then re-boot. no warning and i cant get it to ever blue screen. thing is that i dont see how it could be the power supply cause i've had the computer loaded up and its fine then you go to play a game and it dies. its better than what it used to be in that i have maybe 20mins before it does it.

However one thing i noticed was that on the back of the power supply it has an imput of 230V, 50Hz. Doesnt australia run 250V??? if so do you guys think this is the problem??


If not im gonna start buying new everything until it works again

[dijm8]

are you changing the parts youself? could be many things...cpu could be overheating causing it to shut down...could ba faulty ram.. run a memtest that will tell you if thats the problem...when power supplies blow they tend to break other parts along with it too

[FstStig]

DVD Rom conflicting? Try unplugging it and see what happens.

[S.T.K.E]

Sounds like the CPU is overheating.

[Mirkz]

CPU and/or graphics card can cause a reboot.
If it's mainly noticeable when you go to play a game, which is obviously more demanding on your system, I'd definitely be checking both.
heat sinks and fans all connected properly?
Possibly try running the pc with the side off and a fan blowing into it, if this fixes it, then you have an overheating issue.

[acarmody]

Have you tried replacing the thermal paste on the CPU.

And Australia runs 230V but it has a +10% to -6% tolerance.

[Dr HaxZaw]

yeah first thing i did was thermal paste and its defintely not overheating... computer bloke has been doing all the work except the latest motherboard change i did it myself cause i was sick of waiting a week to get him to tell me theres nothing wrong with it

funny thing is that i've got it down in melbourne with me at my families and its been running fine now for 2 days no problems... you dont think an older house could be causing the problem do you? something in the wiring?? i geuss ill have to wait till i have it back in sydney to find out
im wondering if the cpu is dodgy it might be a little sensitive and so the older house might be messing it up cause the power might be a little less?? i was thinking of getting a multimeter and checking the power sockets

[Grennan]

yeah first thing i did was thermal paste and its defintely not overheating... computer bloke has been doing all the work except the latest motherboard change i did it myself cause i was sick of waiting a week to get him to tell me theres nothing wrong with it

funny thing is that i've got it down in melbourne with me at my families and its been running fine now for 2 days no problems... you dont think an older house could be causing the problem do you? something in the wiring?? i geuss ill have to wait till i have it back in sydney to find out
im wondering if the cpu is dodgy it might be a little sensitive and so the older house might be messing it up cause the power might be a little less?? i was thinking of getting a multimeter and checking the power sockets

..are you running a surge board?

Lots of appliances using the same outlets etc?

[Dangerous Dave]

Have you tried plugging it in on a different circuit ??

[Dr HaxZaw]

yeah i was running everything off a surge board... only had the monitor, computer, and speakers plugged in though, tried running everthing from a different power point and didnt do anything
this morning windows had corrupted a file so had to do a repair on it... could it be that the cd-rom hasnt got all the info so windows hasnt quite installed right?

[dijm8]

their could be a small chance its your house. you could have "dirty power" where its drops out in voltage everynow and then...another suggestion would to be get a surge board (a decent one with the lights for fault/protection on it) and see how you go

[Dr HaxZaw]

another suggestion would to be get a surge board (a decent one with the lights for fault/protection on it) and see how you go

spent $150 on one and did nothing to help

yeah im wondering if its the house... have to check somehow

[Dr HaxZaw]

also windows wont update... it will say its installing them but then at the end it give me an error code: 8E5E0147
any ideas?? i googled it but a system restore wont fix it

[666damo]

Hey,

Sorry to hear about your PC problems.

I've seen PCs refuse to start up many times before, and about 75% of the time it ended up being a dodgy USB device.
After unplugging any USB mice, keyboards, printers etc. try starting it up.
If it starts OK, then shut it down and start deducing what is causing the problem.

My money's on the mouse.


Damo

[Dr HaxZaw]

My money's on the mouse.

well i did have a dodgy mouse but it didnt seem to affect it... but i went and bought a new one and 5 mins after i plugged it in started a game and it died... go figure lol but itll sit there doing nothing fine... you gotta put it under load to crash it

[666damo]

I think i misunderstood your problem.

If it crashes under load, then I'd be looking for a heat dissipation problem, or cpu / memory voltages being set too low.

Try running a couple of torture tests to start off:

1. Download Prime95 and install.
2. Run Prime95, click 'just stress testing'.
3. Click 'Options' -> 'Torture Test'.
4. Choose 'small ffts' and click OK.
5. Allow to run overnight.
6. Check for errors.
7. Repeat above choosing 'blend' for the test type.

Checking for errors:

Prime95 should continue to run tests until you stop it OR until an error is detected.
If an error is detected, check the log (displayed automatically) for messages like "FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 0.5, expected 0.4" AND/OR "Hardware Failure Detected..."

If you see the above errors with Prime95, then it indicates a hardware problem (like cooling or voltage)

Post back and let me know how you get on.

Damo

[Dr HaxZaw]

yeah ran both of those tests for at least 8 hrs each without any problems... im starting to think it must be the house or something like that cause i havent had a problem all week now

[Dr HaxZaw]

so ive got it back home now and its messed up... day before i left melbourne it updated windows and after that it kept crashing... got it home and decided to load windows 7 onto it and its even worse now
so seeing as it was screwed in melbourne im geussing its not the power and now a problem with reading the hard drive... gonna try new cpu and ram and hopefully that gets me going

[50LTRv8]

Have you plugged a power lead into your video card? (if it requires one) I was putting a PC together and couldn't work out why the games would crash, was because I forgot the power cable direct to the card itself.

[Dr HaxZaw]

Have you plugged a power lead into your video card? (if it requires one) I was putting a PC together and couldn't work out why the games would crash, was because I forgot the power cable direct to the card itself.

yeah its got 2 running to it... ill double check all the power cords but it was happening before the new video card

[Dr HaxZaw]

so i just installed a new motherboard (Gigabyte P67A-UD3-B3) and new processor (3.4GHz i7) with 8Gb of ram as well. Also running a Gigabyte HD6870 and a 500W power supply although it says on the side its max output would be 600W (dunno which one is how its rated)... computer was running fine but then after playing a few games of starcraft 2 it shut down and then kept doing it more and more regularly

I've found that it shuts down when it gets to over 50 degrees (not sure how far over but its under 60 degrees). I've tried playing with the fan and all to keep it cooler but i dont seem to be able to get the CPU fan to go over about 1900rpm... anyone have any idea if this temp would usually cause this?? i had an old dual core that used to run in the high 60's without a problem

Also are there any "aftermarket" cooling options that would help?

[ucwepn]

We had a similar videocard power issue with my kids pc he got a free 2nd hand radeon 4850 and we decided to install it when he lost his cheap chinese power supply it needed a 6 pin pci-e plug so we bought a new power supply but it wasn't powerful enough (was rated at 400w but wasn't actually making 400w and 18v at the rail), took it back and got a thermaltake 700w power supply and it was all sorted. This was a fresh install of xp 64 bit as well.

Theres heaps of aftermarket heatsinks and cooling fans that are much better than the standard ones.