devedup.com » hardware http://blog.devedup.com Sun, 09 Oct 2011 16:00:41 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Computer starts and then shuts down before booting – problem solved http://blog.devedup.com/index.php/2009/09/09/computer-starts-and-then-shuts-down-before-booting-problem-solved/ http://blog.devedup.com/index.php/2009/09/09/computer-starts-and-then-shuts-down-before-booting-problem-solved/#comments Wed, 09 Sep 2009 11:32:22 +0000 admin http://blog.devedup.com/?p=136 I switched on my pc and then between 5 and 30 seconds later, before it booted into windows, it would shut down again. It would do this continuously. I disconnected everything from my pc (hard disks, usb devices, all but 1 memory module etc) so I had the bare minimum running. It still happened. So I narrowed it down to cpu, motherboard or power supply.

Doing a search revealed others with similar problems and the most common problem was power supply failures.

I decided to buy a new power supply and the motherboard and cpu upgrade anyway (mine was 3 yrs old). Swapped cpu and motherboard first and the problem was still there. So definitely the power supply. I swapped that, and the problem was resolved.

I then put the old motherboard and power supply on the bench and ran the system from there. I had the power supply fan side down (yes this is bad) – and noticed the system shut down a lot quicker. So I had deduced that it could just be an air flow problem with the power supply overheating. I opened up the power supply (they recommend you not to do this, so be careful!) and there was a lot of dust in there. I vacuumed it all out, ran the system again and the problem hasn’t returned!

So, after all that work (and £250 later) it was dust causing the problem. However, that’s 3 years of dust. I sent back the new power supply and now have put the old one back in and my system has been fine for weeks.

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