Power Issue: Please Confirm I'm not Crazy

CArmstrong · 11-25-2007, 11:34 PM

Guys, I really need your thoughts on this. This past weekend, I visited my parents for Thanksgiving. I brought with me my desktop computer. Up until this point it's been running great. Late Saturday morning, my Dad's computer refuses to boot. Pressing the power button does nothing. I suspect a power supply issue, and set it aside to test later. I shut down my perfectly fine Mom's computer upstairs, and lug it downstairs. I want to test it on my Dad's peripherals and power to rule out any other issues. When I turn the computer on, it goes haywire. The hdd activity light remains solid, there's no video output, and the optical drives fail to open. To me, this means either a motherboard or power supply issue. I move it to a different circuit in the house and it still refuses to start.

And now today my computer, which has been on a different circuit 99% of the time and working fine, is now showing odd issues. When I tell the computer to shut down Windows successfully exits and the video stops, but the CPU and system fans keep running. I have to pull the power to get them to shut off. When Windows does boot, it suddenly stops working. The video output stops and I have to kill the machine to try again. I can't confirm for sure that it's been on a separate circuit the entire time since I did so many power-related troubleshooting problems.

Today, my friend called. His computer is having the exact problems mine is having when booting, and this just started today. His computer was at my house today, and I plugged his power supply into my Dad's computer. With the new PSU, it booted fine. He and I played games for a few hours before he went home. He was on the same circuit my Dad's computer was on.

My conclusions: my house possibly has a dirty power supply? Either that or the "power bar"/surge protector that we use on that circuit is bad. I've already thrown it away just in case. My guess is that on my computer, it begins drawing more power when Windows loads the devices and that causes the instabilities and crashes. Do you think replacing the power supplies on all our computers will fix these odd issues we're having? Since we're all experiencing very weird issues over the course of a 24-hour period, a common power problem is the only thing I can point a finger on. Please let me know what you guys think - this is really important as my family has no working computers at the moment (including me who is going home today). Thank you!

**lorjack** · 11-28-2007, 08:59 AM

it sounds like you have bad power coming to your house. Have you been having power outages or construction effecting the power lately?

11-25-2007, 11:34 PM	#1 (permalink)
CArmstrong Registered User Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 16 OS: XP	Power Issue: Please Confirm I'm not Crazy Guys, I really need your thoughts on this. This past weekend, I visited my parents for Thanksgiving. I brought with me my desktop computer. Up until this point it's been running great. Late Saturday morning, my Dad's computer refuses to boot. Pressing the power button does nothing. I suspect a power supply issue, and set it aside to test later. I shut down my perfectly fine Mom's computer upstairs, and lug it downstairs. I want to test it on my Dad's peripherals and power to rule out any other issues. When I turn the computer on, it goes haywire. The hdd activity light remains solid, there's no video output, and the optical drives fail to open. To me, this means either a motherboard or power supply issue. I move it to a different circuit in the house and it still refuses to start. And now today my computer, which has been on a different circuit 99% of the time and working fine, is now showing odd issues. When I tell the computer to shut down Windows successfully exits and the video stops, but the CPU and system fans keep running. I have to pull the power to get them to shut off. When Windows does boot, it suddenly stops working. The video output stops and I have to kill the machine to try again. I can't confirm for sure that it's been on a separate circuit the entire time since I did so many power-related troubleshooting problems. Today, my friend called. His computer is having the exact problems mine is having when booting, and this just started today. His computer was at my house today, and I plugged his power supply into my Dad's computer. With the new PSU, it booted fine. He and I played games for a few hours before he went home. He was on the same circuit my Dad's computer was on. My conclusions: my house possibly has a dirty power supply? Either that or the "power bar"/surge protector that we use on that circuit is bad. I've already thrown it away just in case. My guess is that on my computer, it begins drawing more power when Windows loads the devices and that causes the instabilities and crashes. Do you think replacing the power supplies on all our computers will fix these odd issues we're having? Since we're all experiencing very weird issues over the course of a 24-hour period, a common power problem is the only thing I can point a finger on. Please let me know what you guys think - this is really important as my family has no working computers at the moment (including me who is going home today). Thank you!

11-28-2007, 08:59 AM	#2 (permalink)
lorjack TSF Enthusiast Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Planet Earth Posts: 2,205 OS: Windows 2K, XP Pro sp3, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Ubuntu	Re: Power Issue: Please Confirm I'm not Crazy it sounds like you have bad power coming to your house. Have you been having power outages or construction effecting the power lately?