Need help diagnosing

S

Sluggo

New Member
Hey guys, i need some of your professional opinions here.

Here's my problem:

About a week ago i was unhooking my desktop (to bring it to a friends), and as i pulled the desktop out of the little area that it sits in, the screen went into "power save mode." Th first thing that went through my head was that the DVI to VGA adapter on my video card broke. I thought this because the desktop was pushed back too far against the wall and was putting strain on the monitor cord and the adapter.
After playing around with it, i decided to go with a new adapter..ordered one off newegg, got it yesterday and put it on. The computer fired right up ad worked for a couple of minutes, then suddenly the screen went black and back into "powersave".

When it does this i can't force restart the computer, i can't reset it, nothing responds. The mouse appears to be disconnected, because the laser is off. The only way to turn it off is to switch off the PSU or unplug it. Restarting it does nothing, no response.

Next, what i did was unplug the HDD. Unplugged the sata and the power, and plugged it back in. The computer will then start back up, but then go back into power save at some random time during the boot process. I also noticed that when the PC is booting, there is 1 or 2 red LED lights right next to the SATA inputs on the MOBO, and the exact moment when the screen goes into power save, the lights go out.

One last thing i noticed is when the computer is actually showing a boot process, there is kind of a high pitch noise coming from the CPU or heatsink, but when it goes into power save, the noise goes away, and all the fans start spinning faster. I tried cleaning the dust out of the heat sink, and all the fans. I tried using different power from the PSU to the HDD. I switched out to a different SATA cable from the HDD to the MOBO. All unsuccessful.

Sorry for the wall of text, but i wanted to try and make sure everything was covered. The computer in question is in my sig. xp sp2.

Thanks in advance for anyone willing to read and help me out =]

EDIT: something happened and the thread got posted halfway through my post.
 
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have you checked the options in control panel, power options, and make sure its set to never turn off??
 
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So wait, the screen is on for a few minutes, turns off, and won't come back on? What version of Windows are you running?
 
-the computer will start to boot up, but there is a high pitch noise from the CPU / heatsink
-at some random time during the boot process, the screen will say "entering power mode" or somethin like that
- After that the only way to turn off or restart the pc is to unplug or switch off PSU
- also the only way to get it to even TRY to boot again is to unplug and plug back in the HDD.


I edited my first post, idk if u two saw it
 
also, I should add to my last post, that when the computer does switch to power save..the high pitch sound from the heat sink / PSU goes away and the fans speed up...they seem to struggle less

any ideas guys? I'm at a loss...dont wanna be wastin money on HDD, heat sinks, CPU's etc if i dont need to...

thanks in advance
 
Sounds like an over heating issue. Just from your description, are you sure the high pitched noise is not coming from the GPU? The only reason I ask is because the video goes out and then stuff changes. Does that makes sense?
 
Pck21- I thought mayb it was an overheating issue as well, but it seems to happen so quickly, that the CPU (or anything for that matter) hardly has any time to heat up. I suppose that it still may be the problem. I'm pretty sure that the sound is coming from the cpu or its heatsink. It couldnt be the video card b/c the GPU is way at the bottom of my case, so i can defeinitely tell it's comin from near the cpu.


FunnelWeb- I suppose that it could be a PSU issue, i thought of that, but i dont really wanna jump into buying a new one without being sure. I'll give that article a read, thanks!


thanks for the replies so far, i really appreciate it
 
I read that article, and it seems that their problem is similar, but on difference i do see is that they are able to restart by holding the power button, unlike me, i have to unplug the machine, because it is completely non-responsive. I did take the battery out for a few minutes to see if this helped at all. But i suppose it is probably a cheap part to replace, so i could just do it any to see..Nice find on that article though

Any other ideas? I suppose i could try re-applying some thermal compound on the CPU, and maybe get a new heatsink.

No one thinks this could be a Hard drive problem?
 
sounds like a overheat or psu problem to me as well. and then as i was typing this i saw you had a biostar board. worst purchase i ever made.
 
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