do you think its the psu?

[Mr_Miyagi]

just recently this fault has begun. upon power up from the main switch, the pc (XP pro sp3) boots through the post, the win splash screen, does a few checks on usb devices (sd cards), keyboard, then a blank screen.

I then have to press reset - it will then go through the start up procedures with the question "start windows normally", which when selected does everything else mentioned and when it gets to the blank screen it loads the mouse pointer followed by desktop. the computer then runs normally as it always has.

if i had selected "last known good" the pc hangs as in para one.


i had to change the video card (pci-e) beginning ofthe year as it died.

research on google has not really helped except that the advice pointed towards the psu (1000w if i remember correctly)

no other errors reported except for "Watchdog.sys" when viewing youtube vids.

Hard drives check out, video card stability ok, memory fine, fans fine.

checking in the bios, the psu voltages appear normal. I do not have the equipment to check the psu manually.

ideas?

[Guts3d]

Check the capacitors on the motherboard, if they appear popped or leaking it can cause the symptoms you describe. If you have a spare hard drive, I suggest loading a quick copy of Windows XP on it, just to see if it might be the image of Windows or a dodgy hard drive. Good luck!

[Ferrit]

I say capacitors as well
Check them really close for bulging and leakage
Looks like this.
http://tinyurl.com/2acuokb

[Mr_Miyagi]

i inspected all the components of the m/b and did not see any thing suspicious - i used a torch and a magnifying glass.

i checked the fans and the one on the vid card was a little noisy but nothing unacceptable. I may go with my gut feeling that the vid card is the culprit, because it was a "grade A" seconds item from MAPLIN so could be faulty! the other reason i suspect it is that is because of the position the pc hangs - its at the point where the screen res changes and the various graphic items are displayed. at second boot (reset button) it loads correctly at the same point.

BUT i dont have a vid card to try my theory... if wrong, it will be an expensive test.


any ideas?

[Guts3d]

Try making sure that there are no U.S.B. drives plugged in, it may be confusing the computer. Alternately, if you feel comfortable in the BIOS you can set it to boot from hard drive C: only. If there are more that 1 stick of ram, try booting with one out. If you get another failure repeat performance, try swapping it with the other stick and boot. If that still doesn't work, I suggest trying the quick and dirty load of Windows on a spare hard drive to see if it is the image causing grief. Good luck!

[Mr_Miyagi]

well this proves that computers are wierder than anything.. As a hard drive cleaning / admin process i decided to defrag the c: drive, and when I switched on this morning the thing booted straight through WITHOUT me having the soft reset as usual. It was a surprise because I turned around after the usual wait of a minute or so, and was shocked to see the desktop!!!! time will tell if this is a one off or if its fixed...

[Guts3d]

Perhaps evil spirits are in it... Nothing worse than an intermittent problem!