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[turboslut]

Okay, so another night of labor down the hole, my gaming PC still won't boot. I flashed the BIOS to latest and swapped a whole bunch of different hardware, but the machine still shuts off in the middle of doing pretty much anything - installing any operating system, and new discovery, even running Memtest86. With a new stolen IDE cable, now I can

Comments

[greypaw]

Sounds like you'd know better than I would, but is it possible the processor heat-sink is overheating due to dust or some such? Mine exhibited similar symptoms when that was the case. Still, like I said, you'd probably know better.

Any diagnostic programs giving any clues?

[turboslut]

Nope, brand new system built from parts - you may be on to something with the CPU overheating thing though. Unfortunately I don't have a great way of quantifying that as I can't install an operating system right this very second. I have a version of Linux that boots from CD that might do the trick though... thanks for the suggestion!

[vhalros]

Hmm... I can take some random guesses. It could be an overheating issue, which you could probably test with that live CD if there are sensors on the motherboard. Also, if there are sensors on the board, the BIOS probably shows their readings somewhere too. ... It sounds like you've tried running it with the minimal amount of hardware you can in the machine (Ie, a video card, memory, CPU, and a CD-ROM).

How did you test the power supply, any way? Is there sufficient current coming through each connector? If you haven't already try making sure all the IDE devices are on a separate power cable coming out of the power supply.

[turboslut]

The temp is fine when the machine is in BIOS... I intend to try measuring the temp with the live CD when I get home but unfortunately I've yet to see the machine shut down while running it. I'll have to try something CPU intensive. Yes on the minimal hardware issue.

I put the power supply into a different live desktop I have at home, which was maybe not the smartest thing I could have done but I was tired and cranky as I'd had a *really* bad day. Yeah, everything is on its own power cable.

[donblay]

From what you describe (granted I don’t know the details), it sounds like a similar problem I had when I first built my PC. It would almost freeze up at random times. No blue screen or anything; just everything stops, can't move the mouse, no errors, it just stops. And it didn't seem to have much rhyme or reason to it. Sometimes it was processing stuff, other times it was just idle. I have a GigByte motherboard with an onboard nic. I too thought it was the power supply, memory, updated the BIOS and drivers, all that. Now you're gonna think I’m over-simplifying this, but what it turned out to by was the onboard nic. I disabled it via device manager and it worked fine. i put in a PCI nic and its been working fine ever since. It might not be the same problem for you, but thought I’d mention it.

[urexxtux]

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