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Resolved Question

Power Cycling At Boot -- RAM or PSU?

Oct 26, 2011 1:15AM PDT

My desktop machine (Dell Dimension E510) strated power-cycling at boot time when I turned it on last night. It had been running fine prior to that. I turned it off in the morning after it had been up for 5-7 days and when I turned it back on last evening the power-cycling started.

I disconnected everything the HDD and the optical drive and tried again. Still had the power cycling on and off. Then removed all 4 sticks of RAM and tried again.

At this point the power remained on and I got the expected beep codes indicating no memory.

I tried inserting 1 stick at a time and rebooting but, in each instance, the power cycling started again. As soon as I went back to booting with no RAM loaded, the power would remain on.

I hadn't been experiencing any RAM errors prior to this. Could something have zapped all four modules while the machine was off? I'm going to see if I have any compatible RAM lying around so I can try that.

(The HDD is fine as I was able to access it using a SATA-to-USB adapter.)

Does this sound like RAM, PSU, or possibly motherboard?

Thanks.
Gary

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Best Answer

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It seems...
Oct 26, 2011 1:32AM PDT

Unless, a true power surge or glitch got you while asleep, I thought it would effect ram alone. Pretty much would take out the PSU as well plus other electronics. I say this for non-powered devices that's about what it would take. I exclude any other cause for now.

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Looks like it was the PSU...
Oct 27, 2011 4:22AM PDT

Looks like it was the PSU.

Tried clearing the CMOS but that didn't solve the problem. Replaced the PSU with one of identical wattage and the machine fired right up. (Got nervous when a boot drive couldn't be found but it turns out this was due to the SATA devices getting disabled in the BIOS when I cleared the CMOS settings.)

Booted a few times after that we no issues. Let it run through the night and no problems found this morning.

Got a new PSU on order (increase of 125W over the existing one) and should have it by tomorrow. Hope all will remain well after that install.

(This machine is never usually left on for long periods as I'm usually working on another machine. The last long period of up time was an anomaly. Dust bunnies are sent on their way on a somewhat routine basis.)

Thanks for the help.

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Answer
CYCLING system
Oct 27, 2011 1:05AM PDT

Are you sure this is a hardware issue? I have seen similar scenarios over the years that turned out to be created by malicious intrusions, the old SASSER virus was one, there were several variants, would/could created system cycling and was not easy to rectify. Just a thought.