Constant rebooting in XP

Thanks,

Been lucky the past day and a half. No reboots. And, I didn't even uninstall McAfee. Somebody must be sending me some good vibes.

Thanks for the link about the cap repair kits. Looks kinda involved, at least for me. Will see if the local PC store do it for a reasonable price. Also, will check out prices on a newer more powerful PSU as well as on a replacement for my motherboard and see which is cheaper.

Silly question perhaps but can a PC set up for a 450W PSU handle something as big as a 900W one?

If I can get close to another year out of this PC then I'll be overjoyed.

Thanks again for all your help.

Your common household wall socket can deliver in a moment close to 2000 Watts. Yet your common 9 Watt LED Lamp does not blow out because it only draws what it needs.
Bob

I've tried a few things since my last update.

There is really no way for me to fix the bad caps myself so I asked around at a few PC stores. They said they don't do that kind of thing so I kind of gave up on that.

I took one of my HDDs (the D drive) out of the PC case and put it in an external case instead. I figured doing that might help if it was a PSU issue cause the HDD has a cord that plugs into the wall.

For awhile this actually seemed to work. I would still get a reboot every now and then but not nearly as often. And kind of strangely, whenever I did get a reboot, I wasn't getting tons of error messages showing up on the event reader. Sometimes I wouldn't get any error messages at all.

I say it worked for awhile because late last week another strange thing started happening. The machine would seem to shut down but the power would still be on. The external HDD would be on (it's set up to shut off when the computer is shut down). The fans would be running. But that's all. So it was like it was running but it wasn't running. I'd restart it and it be OK for a while. However, last weekend something happened that seems to mean the end has finally come.

For some reason, I can't get the PC to start up at all now. The power goes on, the external HDD goes on, the fans go on, but there doesn't seem to be any power going to the internal HDD (C drive). I guess the drive could have finally died and I will try and check that tonight by replacing it with a different one. I guess it could also be the motherboard or the PSU. Whatever it is this seems to be a problem that cannot be fixed.

I went looking around at some PC Parts stores and online the other day for a replacement for my MB, but it is a pretty old one and I didn't have any luck. Similar luck on PSUs. I could try and buy newer stuff but that would mean basically rebuilding the PC from scratch which I am not sure I could do properly myself and which will probably not be as cheap as just buying a new PC.

Any find suggestions that I may try before moving on to something new.

Thanks again for all the help.

Google BAD CAPS and you find the site about that and they do that work.

The problem with BAD CAPS is they only get worse. Ready for my story?

At the office in the early days before I learned about the problem we had a PC that blew the PSU out. We didn't think anything about it blowing the 350 Watt PSU so we added 100 Watts and put in a new 450. Next week it blew out.

Again we didn't think much about it and put in a 550 Watt PSU. It took a month and then it failed.

We shrugged and put in the biggest PSU we had which was 750 Watts so we would not have to fix it again.

A few days later a rather loud BANG! was heard and a little smoke was in the air as we looked for the noise. The 750 Watt did it's job and blew the BAD CAPS off the board. At that point we started to see the trend and the history of BAD CAPS was known.

These only get worse.
Bob

Thanks again for another reply.

I have googled bad caps and I agree that is most likely the problem (I only say "most likely" simply because I don't know all that much about this kind of thing to rule out any other possibility.)

Everything I've read about bad caps seems to describe exactly the problem I am having.

I know it is possible for a person to fix this, but I just don't think it's something I can do. I've been trying to find a place that could do it for me, but so far no luck. I guess I could try Intel, but this is an old motherboard and it is no longer under warranty. They might day say they can do it but they will probably charge an awful lot and I figure it would take at least a month (possibly much longer).

So, I've been looking for a replacement MB but again I haven't had much luck. Intel doesn't make these any more so anything I might be able to find is gonna be old, used or both. Which means I may end up having the same problem all over again down the road.

Honestly, I was hoping to put off buying a new PC for at least another year so if I can fix this one without paying lots and lots of money then that would be the best option.

I live in Japan so I am trying to find some place local that would fix it, but if I can find a place that fixes them back in the US that accepts things from overseas then it might be worth it, if they can do it at a price that I can afford.

Thanks again.

Found a few places that do MB repairs but they all charge quite a lot. So continued my search for a replacement MB instead. No luck but found something that is supposed to handle my CPU even though it's not the exactly the same. Decided to try and turn this into a learning experience so I gave in and bought it.

Replaced MB and reconnected everything OK (I think). Started it up, got it running, and started reinstalling XP. Got a few reboots during that, but eventually made it through. Installed some other stuff before getting hit with some more reboots. Heard a spark so looked inside at the PSU. Took it out and noticed the part of the small connector to the MB seems burnt out. Maybe that was the problem the whole time.

Going to bring PSU into shop tonight and see what they say. Hopefully, I didn't fry new MB and just need to replace PSU.

This has definitely been educational.

Wow!

Think you're spot on about it being a capacitor problem. Checked online and it sure sounds like what's happening to my PC.

Gonna take a closer look when I get home tonight and see if they are bulging or leaking.

Thanks again.