Christmas tree restarts

[Sandwich]

My wife turned my comp off after I went to bed last night and when I went to restart today it acts like an old christmas tree. the power flashes on and off fairly rapidly, until I kill it with the power switch on the power supply? Does this mean the power supply went south? I built this amd64 system just this spring. I have a CoolMaster450 watt PS,amd 3000+ cpu, on a Gigibyte GA-K8NS Ultra 939 MB, nvidia gforce 6600gt Anybody seen a comp act like this before?

[rgharper]

Difficult to say. I would check the system or motherboard manual - the flashing light sequence might have a specific meaning. Or it could be that any component (power supply, motherboard, memory) has gone ker-flooey.

[Sandwich]

I mean this is like a christmas tree. There is no time to post or anything. The fans spin fast and slow and the lights flash on and off probably at 2 cycles a second. It's a Cooler Master PS.

[slgrieb]

Statiscally, the power is more likely to fail than the mainboard, but I think the MOBO is bad. Just a guess. Do you have tools to check the power supply's output?

[Guts3d]

I would also check the reset and power switches, I had this happen a few times.

[Sandwich]

Guts3d, what do you mean? Are there swithches on the MOBO or are you talking house current?
I'm too busy at the office to do what I need to do to figure this out. I do have a spare PS on the way from Newegg, but before I replace things I need to do all the mundane things like pull every card and connection and try to boot it up that way. If it is indeed the MOBO, I'm conflicted about what to do replace or go pci express with a new one. I was not planning to go that route for another year or so.

[Guts3d]

Sorry, I meant the switch from the case to the mobo...I usually pull all the wires and start the computer with a jumper momentarily connected.

[Sandwich]

I see! That eliminates the power switch as a culpret. I'm going to have to dissasemble it completely unless I get lucky with the b/u PS from Newegg. I'm afrraid with all the outside work-- 5hr grass cutting and 3 gardens to weed-- I's going to be a while. Meantime I have this office computer I put togeather an amd xp3000+ 80gb HDD 512 ram and my Dell laptop will have to do.

[Sandwich]

Well I got a brand new thermaltake 420 watt PS yesterday from newegg.
I replaced it and for a while I thought it was going to work. However,there are inate differences in power supplies. This one just powers off and doesn't try to restart constantly like my old supply did The CoolerMaster 450 watt.
In any case, I then started ripping things apart. got down to reseating the cpu with new artic silver 5 paste. I tried booting with no mem and got the appropriate beeps. Then I put inthe mem and the beep became no video card beep -- I then put the video card in and lo and behold it posted. I then put , monitor mouse and keyboard on-- things looked good. I then put in my sata raid HDDs seagate 160'sX2 First got the cables reversed, then changed them to the correct connections aned I was able to boot. Occassionally I would still have to hit the Power button several times to get the thing to power on. I even tried to boot by shorting out the power pins but it would still give me problems.
This morning things are back to no boot. It continues to power off as soon as it comes on there is the faint hint of one beep on power off???
What do people think this is is it a fried Mobo a gigabyte k8ns 939 ultra nvidia nforce 3 chip or my oem amd 3000+ cpu.I have Igb 512X2 mushkin value ram
nvidida gforce 6600gt Vid card, Also in the machine and working at on time
avermedia tvcapture card ,creative audigy 2 platinum 2dvd burners and one cdrom burner Don't ask why! But they did all work!

[Sandwich]

Okay I'm down to the nitty gritty! When I take everything off the mobo including the cpu the darn thing will stay on. I can then reseat the cpu and fan and I get the memory beeps, this time, as soon as I put in the memory stick, it started not turning on again and I'm sure that if I had my old power supply in there it would act like a Christmas tree again. So It's either the MOBO or the cpu. How long is a retail mobo from giga-byte warrarnted for? anyone know that?
Why would the thing i.e. motherboard stay on when there is no cpu and have problems as soon as memory is stuck back in? This time the problem occured much quicker in the cycle. That indicates to me that the problem is getting worse and that maybe reseating the cpu will still not allow it to stay on if I theoretically continued to try to get this thing to stay on.
Is there a way to tell if the mobo or the cpu is fried? That is w/o switching them out for new parts?

[Sandwich]

This is self therapy I guess, but at least I want to let people know that it looks like a motherboard issue to me. The problem has gotten so severe now that even by taking everything apart and reseating the cpu, It still will not turn on. Even w/o a cpu in the socket it will not turn on now. That sure looks like a mb problem to me.

[Sandwich]

A new Mobo from newegg solved the problem. I replaced it exactly and although winddows required reractivation, there was no problem. For some reason I had to reinstall an audio driver for my audigy II soundcard. I put it all togeather and it booted right up though. I've been w/o this my main computer for over a week!!