Power Supply Problem?

I am just looking to get some feedback on my personal computer. The other day I shut my computer off before I went to work like normal and when I came home and went to turn it on it hung at the BIOS screen. After about 10 minutes of being really pissed off I just decided to let it be for the evening and use my laptop.

It Has been a couple days and I thought I should tinker around and see what the problem is. So I opened the side of the case and disconnected all unneccessary devices and the problem was still there. The next step I unplugged all of my USB devices from the back and turned it on. There was about a 5 - 10 second delay after hitting the power button before the computer kicked in, but it got passed the BIOS screen and stopped because it saw no hard drives (they were unplugged). I powered down once again and reconnected my internal componants and hit the power button again. There was still a 5 - 10 second delay but the computer booted normally after that and I am writing you on this forum right now using that computer. I am afraid to plug in my usb devices (Printer, Scanner, USB Hub, Zip Drive etc...) as I do not want to risk the thing crashing on me, but the 5 - 10 second delay concerns me a bit and I think their may be a power supply problem. We have had a lot of storms in the area lately and I protect my computers using an APC battery back up, but I may have gotten a hit. I don't know. I am just wondering if anyone feels something else could be the problem like a motherboard or something.

Detailed Computer Specs
ABIT KN8 Ultra
Antec NEO480 Power Supply
Athlon X2 4400+
2GB OCZ PC3200 DDR Ram
2x 120GB Western Digital SATA2 HardDrives
1x 120GB Western Digital IDE hard Drive
1x 60GB External USB2 Hard Drive (Still connected and appears to be working)
XFX GeForce 6600 256MB PCI-e
DVD-ROM and DVD-RW

Any advice or insight is appreciated before I tear this thing apart and start messing around.

The first place power surges usually head for is the modem or ethernet card.

Have you removed your modem or ethernet card and then booted?

If you have onboard ethernet can you disable it in the BIOS?

There is no modem and the ethernet card is onboard. Once the computer is up it seems to run fine. I am just afraid to plug my USB devices back in and the power on delay has me a bit worried.

If perhaps some data corruption in your CMOS memory caused the initial non-booting, have you tried clearing the CMOS in case something is still set wrong? eg if Network had got set in your boot sequence, the BIOS would likely be awaiting a timeout on the LAN before proceeding with the boot.

Bob, clearing the CMOS is certainly a good idea, but I'd check the power supply too. Your BIOS has something like a PC Health category that can report PSU voltages, but I prefer to take the mainboard out of the loop as much as possible. I use an Antec power supply tester. http://www.antec.com/us/productDetai...?ProdID=77003# It doesn't have LEDS to report the voltages of the various circuits, because these aren't very accurate and can't report fluctuations in the output.

You connect the tester and use a digital multimeter to check the 12V, 3.3V, and 5.5V circuits. Voltages should be within +/- 3 to 5 % of rated output and steady. Make a note of them, and if the PC Health report in your BIOS doesn't agree with the multimeter, you have a bad mainboard.

Run Everest and look under Computer, Sensor - how do the voltages look?

The voltages look fine in the BIOS and when looking at the ABIT monitoring utility. I am going to borrow a PSU tester from work today and see what the voltages look like using that. I will also clear the CMOS when I get home tonite. I hope the board is not bad because I do not want to have to RMA it.

Oh, yes! The joys of warranty service. The current plan for handling warranty issues in the industry seems to be, "Sure, we'll give you a nice long warranty, but our execution and service will suck so much we know you'll never use it."

A fine example is a motherboard vendor who shall remain nameless, who supposedly offered a lifetime warranty on their products. I actually had their RMA department refuse to warranty a board for me because I couldn't find the invoice, hence couldn't provide the purchase date and invoice number!

Yes, I do not want to deal with the headache of going through the RMA process on anything. The board has a 3 year warranty and the PSU has a 5 year I think. I have RMA's some small things like Hard Drives and last time I used it WesternDigitals RMA process was quite painless. I bought all my stuff from NewEgg and I have a PDF of the invoice. I probably should copy that off somewhere as it is on my computer.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by slgrieb

'A fine example is a motherboard vendor who shall remain nameless, who supposedly offered a lifetime warranty on their products. I actually had their RMA department refuse to warranty a board for me because I couldn't find the invoice, hence couldn't provide the purchase date and invoice number!'

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Yepper - kinda makes you wonder who they thought was making an identical product with their name on it!

Companies that behave that way should be publicized and treated like the pariahs they are.

Edited by NooNoo: Please use the quote facility CCT, it gets sooo confusing reading your posts because you can't see where the quote ends and your reply starts!

Had a system do this the other day. There was a setting in the bios that controls the USB Controller. I changed that setting to No Boot - The USB controller is enabled, however the BIOS will not recognize USB storage devices. The system I was working on would hang on the BIOS screen and would not boot to Windows with any USB device connected. I changed this setting and everything worked fine. Hope this helps

Yup, I had this same issue with thumb drives! If I had it plugged in the system, when I rebooted I would see the bios screen till I removed it!