unclegarthy

Hi,

Hope someone can help....

My PC suddenly decided to reboot itself the other day, and half way through loading up again turned off.

I restarted and all seemed fine, but after half an hour it did it again and would not reboot. It powered up, all fans seemed to kick in etc. but there was no beep and the monitor displayed 'No Signal'. It just sits there powered up. I just turned it off at this point.

After leaving it for a couple of hours I came back and it powered up/booted up fine and I was able to use it for a couple of hours more before it turned itself off again.

Since then it will do nothing but power up (but with no 'beep' and no signal to the monitor). I've opened it up and given everything a clean as it was quite dusty. Reseated the graphics card and what connections I could see going to the mother board but to no avail.

PC is approx. 3 years old, power unit is FSP350-60THN, and the mother board is an MSI P4N SLI. I'm no expert in these things so I don't know if this info is useful or not.

I'll be happy to answer any questions if I can lol - thanks in advance for any help that will be gratefully received!

Garthy

ThorXP

Welcome to TSF....

In order to figure out why you are getting random reboots, you need to make a settings change to your computer. Go to:

Start > right click on My Computer > Properties > Advanced tab > Setup and Recovery 'Settings'

UN check 'Automatically Restart'. Click OK.

Reboot your computer. Now when Windows detects a problem it will not automatically reboot, but rather give you a blue screen.

Blue screens are often called 'Blue Screens of Death' (or BSOD) by users, and 'Stop Messages' by Microsoft. We need to know the exact message you see when you get the blue screen. We especially are looking for a set of letters and numbers about half way down the page that take this format:

0x0000008e

This is usually followed by a set of 4 similar numbers in parenthesis. For now we just need the first set of letter and numbers (before the numbers in the parenthesis).

iTouch

Hey,

I would go with the power supply being a low wattage.
The mothbaord doesnt seem to be that old but the power supply is only 350W

unclegarthy

Thanks for the replies guys.

ThorXP - I'm afraid I don't get any sort of screen come up (blue or otherwise), the PC powers up (doesn't beep/boot) but I don't get any sort of signal going to the monitor at all (yes I've checked the connections lol). There are none of the usual load screens that pop up during a normal boot cycle, just a big blank.

iTouch - quick question (not doubting you for a second and will swap out the power unit to try) but why would the power supply be a problem now and not before? Nothing has been changed on the machine (it was bought as a complete unit - sorry, should have said that?) so the power supply was adequate before and din't cause any problems.

Thanks again for your replies :)

dai

for pcie you need to start here
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...corsair%2b550w
and upwards depending on the video card

iTouch

Well we all know that over time things get old and with PSU its used more and more so the coils inside will being to burn out with the more power that it streches out to use.

If it was the Motherboard you would most likely see problems with things like PCI cards no being reconsied then one minute they are, Sound problems and other things.

The fact that it worked after a while of leaving it like you said for a few hours it gives the PSU time to cool down so it will be ok to use until them coils get hot again which is what it sounds like.

unclegarthy

Problem solved guys - kind of.

On closer inspection the Northbridge fan wasn't spinning, and when we tried to move it found it to be fused solid. Took it off and the bearing casing was melted and twisted. Looks like the fan stopped working, heatsink got so hot that it warped the fan and has pickled the Northbridge and the PCB (haven't taken the heatsink off yet but it's almost certainly the problem),
Took off the video card etc. and tried them in another PC and it all works fine.

So, next question, does anyone know a good replacement for an MSI P4N SLI (black) motherboard? It would seem they don't make them anymore! And to top it all off, the PC maker (Evesham) has gone into liquidation so no spares from them - bloody typical!

grimx133

Is this your motherboard? http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p...del=P4N_SLI-FI

If so, it's decent news, you should be able to use everything else and just get another motherboard. Will need the rest of your specs - cpu, power supply manufacturer, model and wattage, video card, ram manufacturer - speed, and model number would be nice too. Then there's your hard drives and cd/dvd drives. The MSI board supports four IDE devices, where modern boards only support 1 ide channel with 2 devices. And the next generation Core i7 boards have some that don't take any ide, just sata. So, we need to know how many and the interface in regards to ide and sata. Pretty much everything eh.

Of course, there's always the option of buying the identical board on e-bay, though that's a "you pays your money, you takes your chances" proposition.

edit - Forgot to mention the OS. The activation is tied to the motherboard, but usually a call to microsoft will get you a new activation number when it's a case of a fried motherboard. Not quite sure on that, being it's a purchase system though.

magnethead

2 words: repair install ;)

unclegarthy

Thanks grimx133, that definitely looks like my motherboard.

This is the info I hurriedly got last night, hope it's enough...

PSU - 350W FSP (FSP350-60THN-P350W)
VIDEO CARD - Radeon X800GT
RAM - 2x 512Mb (model: Rx8 PC2-4200U-444-11)
PROCESSOR - INTEL P4
H'DRIVE - 1x SATA 200Gb
DVD-RW/DVD-ROM - IDE connector
Floppy - Can't remember but think it's IDE too.
OS is XP but I've got all the neccessary install discs for that I believe.

Any other info needed let me know and I'll be able to get it tonight.

Cheers!

dai

if you stay with the 350w it will not be long before you are back