Interesting problem

Up at work, we had a computer come in with a very interesting problem. I AM NOT still working on this computer and AM NOT asking for help in solving the problem, the client decided to buy a new computer rather than continue to dump money into the old one.

But I never did find out what the problem was... So I'm gonna ask here. Here is the history. They brought it in and said that it went in a continuous start up cycle. We started it up, and got BSD. So, we ended up ordering a new board, processor and memory for it. The new board needed the 24 pin power connection and the old psu only had 20, so we replaced that too. No more BSD, great, right? No, now we are to the problem that they brought it in for, it keeps restarting. But, not exactly like they said. They said, basically that at a certain point in the boot up cycle it would start over, however, we found that at a seemingly random time, it would restart. Sometimes during post, sometimes loading windows, and sometimes after windows had loaded. After a while, though, and after replacing basically EVERY part of the computer except the hard drive, it was acting completely weird.

It would at a random time either shut off, or SHUT DOWN, not just cut off and restart. And what's ever weirder than that, is that, after shutting itself down and being off for a little while, it would, completely on it's own, just start back up again.

I honestly thought that it might be a short in the power button, but I think that's one of the first things we checked out... I'm not sure though.. What I personally thought was really strange, was that it would start itself up. Could a hard drive fault cause this? This machine had been surged during a storm, so any part of it could have been damaged in some way...

 

That would have been the 2nd thing I checked after the RAM. Random reboots are commonly caused by bad hard drives. I would think that after every part was replaced except the hard drive, and the same problems are still occurring, that would have pretty much spelled it out.

Power spikes and surges can do really strange things to PCs. In the 20 years I've been working on PCs, nothing really surprises me anymore. I occasionally run into something new, a weird issue I've never seen, but it doesn't surprise me anymore. The first time I saw PC turn itself on, I think I lost the ability to be surprised by freakish PC happenings.
Anyway- I think some money could have been saved and some stress avoided by simply replacing (or at least testing) the hard drive. At least it's all OK now. :cool

 

Yeah, I know. After everything being replaced but the hard drive, I guess asking if it could have been the hard drive was a pretty stupid question. Honestly though, I thought it might have been the power button. I've seen some of them get misaligned/jacked up/stuck before. Or I thought I might have plugged it in wrong but I don't think that would have caused random turn on's offs.. Plus, if it was the button, it most likely wouldn't have been causing shut downs, it would have just shut off, unless the computer was customized so that the power button shut the computer down, which I have seen before.

ANYWAY, I guess I learned a lesson about checking the hard drive. Or really just testing everything more before replacing things. Course, it's not my fault, cause I'm not the one in charge of the fixing. I just do what I'm told.. lol.

And yes, a little money probably could have been saved by testing things more, but we used the new parts for the new computer we built, so not really anything was wasted. All of the new parts worked fine in the new PC, so, all is good.

 

Wake on lan has nothing to do with a windows updates if a pc is shut off, a wake on lan or "magic packet" has to be sent to activate the wake on lan feature.

 

Ah that makes a bit more sense, but still very unlikely, as it probably woulda been all systems attached waking up if a wol packet was sent.