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A failure to power up?

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  • A failure to power up?

    Do to an unfortunate accident, my poor machine has become disturbingly like a paperweight. :(

    Any help at pinning down the source of this vexation would be greatly appreciated.
    (I’m borrowing time on someone else’s computer to post this.)

    Here is the problem:

    When I press the power button, the power light on the case lights up but nothing else happens. No fans turn on. No HD activity light and I don’t hear the HD working either. The machine remains inactive as far as I can tell…

    I’ve also discovered that even when the main power cord is unplugged the light will turn on when the button is pressed?! (But it’s unplugged?!) I’m guessing that one of the components is holding some kind of a charge.

    What happened is this:
    The computer locked up (Or was slow to close a program?) and my friend who was using my machine decided to speed things up by pressing the power button while the machine was running. And now, it won’t turn back on. (Much yelling resulted from this ‘interesting’ choice of actions when I inevitably returned to the room to face this horror.)

    Additionally, although this may or may not be relevant:

    Disturbingly, this is not the first time I have had to deal with a similar problem with this machine. In a prior instance my machine was yet again shut down when it was running. >:/

    However that time when the power button was pressed to reactivate it did experience problems but they where different.

    The power light flickered slightly and the power light on my removable drive bay (Not the activity light.) barely lit and flickered rapidly. I had the machine hooked to a backup power supply which showed that the amount of powering being drawn was fluxing and well bellow the normal intake. The machine wouldn’t even begin to boot.

    After much messing with it (Turning it off & on, leaving it without power for long stretches of time then trying again) my machine did successfully power on. And everything worked well for the next few weeks. Then after a normal shutdown it wouldn’t power back on with the same fluxing problem as above, except minus the turning it off while running...

    I final bought a new power supply figuring that may be the root of the problem and it seemed to fix it, but only temporarily. I returned to the shop I'd bought the power supply from and they swapped it out for another one. (This happened twice more within the same week if I remember correctly. )

    However since the problem seemed to go away on it’s own the one time before returning and the fact that it kept reoccurring even after changing the power supply several times I’ve always been a bit worried that something else was damaged.

    That was several months ago, since then my machine has powered up without a problem.

    Although now that I think about it there was one other problem that was happening, I'm not sure if it is related though.

    Sometimes, almost randomly it seems, my CPU usage will max out at 100% in the Windows Task Manger’s Performance tab, and stay that way even when I’m not doing anything.

    When this happens everything becomes extremely sluggish. The CPU usage seems to stay at 100% once this occurs no matter how long it is left. If the machine is restarted (Via windows normal software reset not the case's reset button.) then the CPU usage ‘unlocks’ and everything works fine again.



    Here are the specs I have; I can dig up more information if it will help.

    OS: Windows XP.
    CPU: Pentium 4, 2.8G (Single Core.) (I don’t recall if it’s a Northwood or a Prescott.)
    Motherboard: ASRock P4i65G.
    Memory: Two Corsair 1G Sticks of ram.
    Sound: Sound Blaster Live.
    Video: Sapphire HD 3850 (AGP)
    HD: 80G IDE mounted in a Kingwin KF-22-IT removable drive bay.
    Power Supply: 600W OCZ Stealth X Stream.


    Any and all suggestions are welcome.
    When I dream,
    I carry a sword in one hand,
    a gun in the other...

  • #2
    Re: A failure to power up?

    What spyware and Antivurus scanners do you use? When you are looking at the taskmanager and see 100% CPU usage what Process is doing it?

    Comment


    • #3
      I don't recall any one process being to blame.

      At the time I was using CA Internet Security Plus. (Firewall/Anti-Virus/Spyware.)

      Since I can't get it to power up, I can't be sure. I remember checking to see which process in the task manger tab was eating up all the CPU and found none of them to be using any large values. I do remember 'System Idle' being 99 one time I checked while the CPU usage was stuck at 100%, but I'm pretty sure that process should be freeing up the CPU usage instead of taking it away.
      Last edited by SpellSword; 11-01-2008, 01:53 PM. Reason: Fixed Typo.
      When I dream,
      I carry a sword in one hand,
      a gun in the other...

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: A failure to power up?

        Hmm... About the "pegged at 100%," my old laptop had that problem. It was unusable until a reformat.

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: A failure to power up?

          Yeah, since you cannot start windows have you since tried a clean install?

          Or if it wont start at all to even get you in the BIOS have you tried new ram or clearing the CMOS fully

          Comment


          • #6
            No power, doesn't even start to boot.

            @Lsdmeasap:
            I seem to not be getting any power so I can’t access the BIOS. To clarify, nothing seems to turn on save the glowing power light. Not even the case fans.

            I think I may have some old ram that I swapped out a while back for a faster model. I’ll try exchanging the ram currently in the motherboard for the old ram.

            To clear the CMOS, don’t I need to enter the BIOS setup during boot? (I’m not very familiar with the workings of the BIOS & CMOS.)

            @Aguiluz:
            If I can get it to startup, I’ll be sure to try formatting and re-installing everything to attempt to correct the 100% CPU usage problem.
            When I dream,
            I carry a sword in one hand,
            a gun in the other...

            Comment


            • #7
              Re: A failure to power up?

              Ya, try that other ram. And no, no need to enter the BIOS to clear the CMOS, here is a how to in post #2 >>>
              http://forums.tweaktown.com/f69/bios...h-guide-27576/

              You can also remove the battery in addition to that method and press in the case power switch for a minute while you are waiting the 20-30 minutes as well to drain any remaining power

              Comment


              • #8
                Re: A failure to power up?

                Clear the Cmos/Bios on the motherboard, CLR-CMOS either a quick short between two pins or removing a jumper. takes about 2sec remember power off first. You could just takeout and replace the little silver battery

                Comment

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