PC won't stay up

I have a Windows 2000 Pro that won't stay up for more than 2 minutes. This is not even long enough for me to run my stinger utility. I'm pretty sure it has a virus. It won't even stay up in Safe Mode! When it does power down - it is not complete. There is the red wait light that stays on. I've tried unplugging it (it takes 8 seconds for the light to go out) leave it unplugged for 5 minutes and then repug it in. The RED light comes back and will not let me boot! Any work arounds other that hooking it up as a slave to another machine?

 

What do you mean by "power down" do you mean it starts a shutdown sequence? Also, where does this Red light come from? is it the power light? Perhaps its the standby light? Maybe its a thermal thing?

Can we have some specs? Motherboard make, model, graphics cards, everything up to date? can you run a diagnostic floppy disk? This sounds like a power management issue to me

 

The power light I'm speaking of is next to the hard drive light. Yes I believe it might be the "stand by" light. Sometimes I can get it to come up close to 5 minutes. It gives no error messages such as "thermal failure" It just shuts off!

I do not have all the Specs. It is a Micron ClientPro. All updates are current. Running windows 2000 Pro up to service pack 3. I have not done service pack 4 due to "BUGS". Service pack 4 works fine on a clean machine though.

I did hook up the drive to another computer and ran stinger. It found nothing. I am going to take the system home so I can change the power supply out tonight. The fans keep running so I'm not sure if is a heat problem.

 

Ok well can you go into bios setup and see if you can find any power managment settings? It sounds like a laptop to me and it would make a lot of sense if it was.

In the 5 minutes you DO have check out power settings in control panel power options, and see if you have any settings in there that might be turning the screen off or somthing.

 

what about high temp shutoff? while your in the bios, check the temps (if available)

 

Turns out to be the motherboard shorting out. After taking the PC home and having my "Major Geek" husband disassemble it part by part. It was even dimming the lights in my home office! Now I have to shop for a replacement Mother board. Any hints on how to do that? I have never replaced one before.
"husband only consults for my company on a part time basis due to the "Boss" not wanting to pay him half the time.

 

Crap! that was unexpected! was it shorting because the motherboard power-in pins were touching the motherboard tray?

If that was it then the motherboard should still be alright. Other than that www.newegg.com is a good place for US based hardware. Depending on your processor and video card (AGP probably), and ram (DDR or SDRAM, or even rambus) you need to find a suitable replacement. If its AMD based, i reccomend a nForce2 based motherboard. Ive usually had good luck with Abit. Dont go for cheaper ones... you will probably regret it. I'd steer well clear of ECS or PCChips motherboards, theyve given me nothing but trouble in the past!