Power Problem, Gateway 5618E

I have a Gateway 5618E I'm having an issue with.

The system simply powers off, no warning, during startup or shortly after.

I've turned off the 'smart fan' controls in the bios so that the fans are all going as fast as they can all the time. It's not heat. CPU temp hovers around 30-31 c sitting at bios. It'll stay running happily sitting in bios for as long as you leave it on.

It seems that this problem started happening just recently, after a windows update of some sort...and I'm wondering if that's a coincidence or not.

The only thing I can think of is the power supply unit. I've got a new one on order just in case.

 

Greetings, Lunatic001.

The update could very well be the problem - the forums are all buzzing about a bad batch recently.

Can you boot into Safe Mode? If so, you might be able to restore to an earlier time, before the recent update(s).

 

I can't boot into safe mode either. It powers off.

 

I was just able to get this machine to boot to a desktop after yanking out the modem (People still use these?), turning the fan control back to auto (they spin slower), and disconnecting the power from the dvd drive. It's been up a few minutes now. I'm definitely thinking failing power supply. I should note I also disabled serial and parallel ports in bios. No real reason for this, other than to get to the very minimum of what I needed.

 

Sounds like you're on the right track - don't have a spare PSU laying around, do you?

 

No such luck. The results aren't consistant either. I checked on the machine just now and it had shut down, and turned off again partway through the boot process. I have no doubt if I try turning it on a few times I'll eventually get it to a desktop again.

Hopefully a new power supply will solve this.

 

This really has me baffled. It's not the power supply. I've swapped ram. It's not overheating.

It's beyond my powers apparently. I'm chalking it up to gremlins and ditching the thing.

 

Don't throw it away yet - why don't you burn a Linux distro (I recommend Mint, use it to start the machine and/or salvage important data.
At the very least, you might split your troubleshooting in half (Windows vs. hardware), and you'll have a fresh Linux disk on hand for future projects.

Maybe a failing hard drive? You might try some of the OEM's diagnostics downloads, just to check.

 

I actually have ubuntu on a thumb drive, and it even fails on that. So, I disconnected everything , and tried booting on the thumb drive - and it still failed. I'm guessing it's a motherboard problem.

 

Ubuntu starts, then shuts down. It's clearly booting from the thumb drive.

 

My two cents would have been HD was going bad.

Maybe try booting with just one memory module at a time?

 

IT'S THE BAD CAPACITORS ON THE MOTHERBOARD!!
I have this motherboard, the ECS C51PVGM-M and same symptoms, same troubleshooting results. On a hunch, I googled about capacitors. I learned about "capacitor plague" on Wikipedia, and watched Youtube videos showing what bad capacitors look like.
The row of 7 capacitors next to the CPU socket on my motherboard all appear to be bad. They all have the bulging top a blown capacitor has, instead of the flat top a good one has. About 3 of the 7 have a brownish residue on top, which I understand is leaked electrolyte, further confirming the blown capacitor hypothesis.
At this point, I don't know if Gateway will swap out the board or if I'm just SOL. This was a manufacturer problem of using defective capacitors. I have a similar board I may swap in, an MSI MS-7207.
I am posting this here now because none of my Google searches really pointed me in this direction; but I now see this combination of symptoms practically screams bad capacitors, so I hope future Google searches will find this solution and help some other poor fool find the problem faster.
See these videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHTi4OcpGTk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngA4k32jLGc