Another "PC Shuts Down" Thread...

P

PPBart

Member
I've got a desktop in my home office that is really starting to frustrate me(!) About 6 months ago, it began to randomly shut down without any warning, at first maybe once a week or so. I made sure no capacitors were (visibly) bulging, and all plugs and connections were tight. The power supply fan began to make a lot of noise about that same time, so I replaced it with an identical unit (cheap Logisys 480w).

That may have lessened the frequency of shutdowns for a while, but it certainly didn't cure the problem. The shutdowns became more frequent, then the PC began to abort startup, sometimes rebooting several times before actually starting. I suspected a virus undetected by McAfee, or perhaps some corrupted file(s) in XP. Since XP support is going away soon, I decided to try to address both issues by doing a clean install of Windows 7.

The Win7 install went smoothly, no shutdowns in the middle, and the system seemed to be more stable -- for a few days. Then the shutdowns and aborted startups resumed, and have gotten progressively worse. I've seen the PC reboot itself as much as 7 times when trying to start up.

I've run CheckDisk several times (always OK) and I've run MemTest several times (always OK). Both utilities ran to completion without any of those pesky shutdowns.

The PC is only used for MS Office applications, email, internet browsing, watching an occasional video on Amazon Prime. As I mentioned above:
-- PS is Logisys 480w;
-- Motherboard (about 2 yrs old) is MSI G41M-P23 LGA 775 with 2 Gb of DDR3;
-- Video card (maybe a year old) is Nvidia G-Force GT610;
-- Hard disk is a WD 500 Gb SATA (2 yrs old).

I would like to figure out what's wrong, and would appreciate any suggestions -- but I'm about ready to either junk the system and buy a new one, or start buying parts and build a replacement (last PC I built was about 10 yrs ago, but I think I could manage it...).
 
Does it shutdown or reboot or does it do both. If it shuts down, its an overheating issue. If it reboots then its a hardware issue. Do this. Boot to safe mode and choose to disable automatic restart on system failure. Next time it wants to reboot, it won't . You will get w blue screen with information on it. We need to know the information it displays. Code number or filename.
 
Okedokey said:
...I would be focusing on that PSU.
Click to expand...


Yes, I also suspect that $20 PSU could be the main culprit...

Oddly, the PC has been running continuously since yesterday afternoon. I ran an in-depth virus scan overnight (not that I seriously suspected a virus, more just to stress the system), and the grandkids have been playing games and watching videos for several hours this morning. No shutdown so far...
 
Update...

After this PC ran without a problem for more than 24 hrs, I shut it down last night, and this morning attempted to boot up. The PC went thru POST numerous times. More than once it would just go to a blank screen, no response to mouse or key, no indication of HDD activity, but the power supply was still running; I would finally turn power off, then back on to try again.

The Windows Error Recovery Screen popped up; I told it to start normally (I've seen that numerous times before and have let it try to repair with no results).

Finally after several attempts it successfully started up and (at the moment) seems to again be running normally. No BSOD, no info of any sort on screen. I opened Control Panel and confirmed that the automatic restart was turned off.
 
I cant say for sure this is what it is, but like has been said, that P/S is pretty much crap. Even though its a 480W. It really only has 192W on the 12V rail. Plus being a low quality unit I would doubt it can even push that much.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top