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General discussion

Shutdown on bootup - Need help diagnosing

Aug 9, 2005 3:13AM PDT

Last month my six-year-old son?s hand-me-down PC started beeping continuously when powered on and then shut itself down in about 5 seconds.

We did the following troubleshooting:

Checked all connections and found them to be tight and sound.
Took off-line, one at a time, the CD-ROM, floppy, and hard drives.
Replaced with known working versions the power supply, sound and video cards, and RAM.

We had the same problem after each step.

Over the course of the next two weeks I tried booting up several times, but each time the immediate shutdown occurred.

We unplugged the PC from the power source for about ten days. I was then able to boot up with no problem and it ran happily for about 3 or 4 hours. When I rebooted, it began to power up but again shut down in 5 seconds. (I was not able to replicate this behavior by leaving it unplugged overnight.)

No hardware or software changes had been made, nor were there any apparent symptoms prior to the problem. Since we live in south Florida, we have frequent power outages and brownouts. The climate and our three cats make overheating a constant menace, but we saw no visible evidence of any. The heatsink looks fine; its fan works, as does the CPU cooler and the case fan.

Although it was custom-built, this is now a spare PC and I don?t want to invest any more than necessary to keep it running. Our son uses it for games and educational software. There is no internet connection, not even a modem installed, and it is virus-free.

The process of elimination would seem to indicate motherboard and/or chipset, but I wanted some input before buying something we may not need. I may be overlooking something obvious. If we do need, I would appreciate any suggestions for a low-cost replacement for this system configuration.

The PC is running Windows 98SE. Specs:

AMD Athlon-PECM, 908 MHz
Asus A7V133 (5 PCI, 1 AGP Pro, 1 AMR, 3 SDR DIMM)
Chipset - VIA VT8363A Apollo KT133A
256 MB (SDRAM)
Award Medallion BIOS(06/06/01)
Video Adapter - ASUS AGP-V7100 SDRAM v5.33a
3D Accelerator - nVIDIA GeForce2 MX/MX 400
AcerView 7133s
Creative SB PCI512 Sound Card
Promise Ultra100 IDE Controller

Thanks, rmck

Discussion is locked

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Shutdown
Aug 9, 2005 8:52AM PDT

Do a close visual inspection of the motherboard. Check for leaking or bulging capacitors. They're the small clyndrical shaped things on the motherboard. Look at the tops, they should be flat, not rounded or domed. If you find this, then replacement of the board is in order.

Try running the machine with the side panel off and a small house fan blowing directly on the motherboard.
If it shows improvement, then it's heat related.

What configuration of memory chips? One stick of 256, 2 sticks of 128, etc.?
Memory chips can fail. If you have more than one, try booting with just one stick installed, then replace with another.

Best of Luck

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Try a different power supply...($25)...and...
Aug 10, 2005 4:18AM PDT

If that doesn't work than it's your motherboard.


and life goes on...

Jack