Power failure?

I'm trying to help my friend with her computer. For some reason, she turns on her computer, it goes to startup, but then shuts down after a matter of seconds. She took it to a computer tech and he used all her wires and according to her, her PSU, and it worked fine. She took it home, same song second verse. She's tried plugging it in to different plugs in her house to no avail. She's taken her computer back to the tech a couple of times but he's stumped. Any thoughts would be great! Her computer is a Dell Dimension E510.

 

Welcome to Major Geeks! I find it strange that a tech would let a customer take the PC home even though it isn't working and just say "I'm stumped". On the other hand, if he didn't charge anything, then no big deal, I guess. But the tech should have at least pinpointed the problem. It could be anything at this point. Maybe the CPU is overheating, maybe the motherboard has bad capacitors that are shutting down the PC. Just because a power supply turns on doesn't mean that it's working correctly. I have had several PSUs test 100% OK on a power supply tester (it's a little electronic gizmo) but still not power up a PC. Even a faulty floppy drive can cause issues like this. The first thing I would do is remove anything not absoultely necessary for the PC to run; this would mean removing all PCI cards (modem, sound card, NIC, etc), all drives (hard drives, CD drives, floppy drives) both the drive's data cables and power cables should be disconnected, remove all the RAM but one stick, if the PC has on board video use it and remove the video card if there is one. Be sure to unplug the power cord before opening the case. Then make sure the one RAM stick is installed correctly and make sure the CPU heat sink and fan is installed correctly with new thermal grease and make sure the fan is clean and spinning free and easy. Then try to power up. You should get a beep and then the PC will post, then you will probably get a number of errors about no drives being available. Enter the BIOS at this point and go to the health/hardware monitor and check the temps and voltages. Leave the screen up for a few minutes and keep checking the temps and volatges to make sure they're steady and within acceptable ranges. If all checks out thus far, shut down, unplug the power cord, and connect the drives (CD, HD, FD) and power up and boot into Windows if possible. Then shut down again, unplug again, and start adding devices one at a time. If it any point you run into problems, you'll know what was responsible.
Good luck! and keep us posted
:major [dlb]

 

Welcome to Major Geeks! I find it strange that a tech would let a customer take the PC home even though it isn't working and just say "I'm stumped". On the other hand, if he didn't charge anything, then no big deal, I guess. But the tech should have at least pinpointed the problem. It could be anything at this point. Maybe the CPU is overheating, maybe the motherboard has bad capacitors that are shutting down the PC. Just because a power supply turns on doesn't mean that it's working correctly. I have had several PSUs test 100% OK on a power supply tester (it's a little electronic gizmo) but still not power up a PC. Even a faulty floppy drive can cause issues like this. The first thing I would do is remove anything not absoultely necessary for the PC to run; this would mean removing all PCI cards (modem, sound card, NIC, etc), all drives (hard drives, CD drives, floppy drives) both the drive's data cables and power cables should be disconnected, remove all the RAM but one stick, if the PC has on board video use it and remove the video card if there is one. Be sure to unplug the power cord before opening the case. Then make sure the one RAM stick is installed correctly and make sure the CPU heat sink and fan is installed correctly with new thermal grease and make sure the fan is clean and spinning free and easy. Then try to power up. You should get a beep and then the PC will post, then you will probably get a number of errors about no drives being available. Enter the BIOS at this point and go to the health/hardware monitor and check the temps and voltages. Leave the screen up for a few minutes and keep checking the temps and volatges to make sure they're steady and within acceptable ranges. If all checks out thus far, shut down, unplug the power cord, and connect the drives (CD, HD, FD) and power up and boot into Windows if possible. Then shut down again, unplug again, and start adding devices one at a time. If it any point you run into problems, you'll know what was responsible.
Good luck! and keep us posted
:major [dlb]

 

Whooops! I didn't mean to post that novel twice. Sorry, my bad :rolleyes

 

I had an unknown brand AMD 3000 with very similar symptoms. It had several extra hard drives and fans, and a 450w psu. The computer would randomly just go off. One slightly odd thing was that the power led on the front of the case would intermittently flash, even with the power cable unplugged. Checking the error logs showed no errors at all. I took the power supply out and discovered that the connector for the motherboard had been getting very hot. This was evident by the signs of burning (see pic)



There were no other signs of power supply failure, even after taking the psu apart. It didn't even smell like it had been getting hot. To eliminate the possibility, I swapped it with a known working one from a spare computer, and the machine worked fine, without randomly going off. Once I had identified the problem, I added a new 600w psu and this seems to cope with the load placed on it.

 

Thank you for responding. My friend miscommunicated. (grrr) she brought it to my house and it starts like I said, but doesn't shut off. It goes to the windows XP, says "starting up", and then doesn't do anything. Doesn't shut off, doesn't process...zip. The fan is working, but it makes VERY little noise. I also kept an eye on the CPU to make sure it wasn't overheating. I was able to go to the boot menu and even run diagnostics, but I cannot get the OS to work. She tried putting in the disk that re-installs the OS, but it won't load. Its definately not the PSU, she wasn't even using one at my house, just plugged it directly into the wall. Like I said, when she took it to the tech, it worked fine. He shut it off and on FIVES TIMES and it worked like a charm. Yet at her house AND my house, it wouldn't work. I haven't finished running diagnostics, not enough time, but so far, all of the tests have passed and I ran quite a few. :cry I'll print out your responses for her to try. Any other FAINT ideas would be great!!!

 

Finished running all tests in the "symptom tree" and it passed all but the graphic video test and something about colors...sorry I don't have the exact quote on hand, my friend took the computer back to her house. I don't see how this would have anything to do with the OS not working properly. It's like something isn't connecting, it gets to a certain point and it just quits thinking. Doesn't shut down, doesn't freeze (I can still move the mouse) it just stops thinking, stops loading... Anyway, I don't know if that little bit helps or not. I've tried to google and research the problem myself, but I don't even know what the darn problem is! Will google some more tomorrow, I'm googled out! I've seen a lot of people suggest taking the computer completely apart, cleaning it, and putting it back together again. If it were my computer, I'd do it, but its a friends and since I've never torn apart a computer before, I'm terrified I'll screw something up!!!!

 

It seems to me, from the sound of it, that the video card (or the driver) is causing the problem. Can you boot successfully in safe mode? Have you removed the video card and then put it back in, just to be sure the slot is clean and that the card is installed completely and correctly? If you have another video card (or on board video), remove the current video card and try it. Any card will do, even an old 4mb PCI card, just as a diagnostic measure.....

 

Okay, hopefully later today I can try and start the computer in safe mode. My friend is a little wary about taking anything out of her computer. She already removed the hard drive and then put it back in before she ran diagnostics. I think her husband is planning to take it into a different technician today to see if they can come up with something. Like I said, what's bizzare is that at the tech's office, the computer worked fine. It went past the startup, the programs worked...everything. She brought it home, she couldn't get it past the startup screen (windows xp is starting up). At my house it wouldn't get past that screen either. I guess we'll see what happens at the other tech's office. I'm going to do some more research this afternoon. Bleh.

 

My friend took her PC to a different tech. He says there are at least 11 different viruses on her computer. That explains her problems! Not fun, but at least she knows what's wrong. Thanks so much for all your help! This forum and site are really helpful, I look forward to coming here again in the future. (hopefully for fun and not while I'm in a computer crisis!)