Boot problems

[Dave]

I have a homebuilt PC that's worked flawlessly for a year, and now it
won't boot up reliably. It's an MSI MS-7103 motherboard with a Celeron
D 2.66. I have one hard drive, a CD R/W drive, a wireless card and an
AGP DVI card.

It usually gets through POST and enters the Windows XP splash screen,
then it turns itself off. The odd thing is that if I can get it to
boot, it will run reliably all day long with no problem.

Here's what I've done so far:

*Replaced the CPU fan thinking it was a cooling issue. The new fan
works better, but I still have the problem.

*Reinstalled Windows.

*Completely disassembled the PC and put it back together again,
verifying all the connections.

Any ideas on what might be causing this, or what else I can try to
solve it?

Thanks!

Dave

 

[Bo]

I have a homebuilt PC that's worked flawlessly for a year, and now it
won't boot up reliably. It's an MSI MS-7103 motherboard with a Celeron
D 2.66. I have one hard drive, a CD R/W drive, a wireless card and an
AGP DVI card.

It usually gets through POST and enters the Windows XP splash screen,
then it turns itself off. The odd thing is that if I can get it to
boot, it will run reliably all day long with no problem.

Here's what I've done so far:

*Replaced the CPU fan thinking it was a cooling issue. The new fan
works better, but I still have the problem.

*Reinstalled Windows.

*Completely disassembled the PC and put it back together again,
verifying all the connections.

Any ideas on what might be causing this, or what else I can try to
solve it?

Thanks!

Dave

I recently had the exact same problem- turned out to be a bad video card.

 

[Dave]

I recently had the exact same problem- turned out to be a bad video card.

How did you determine that the video card was the problem?

 

[Frank McCoy]

I have a homebuilt PC that's worked flawlessly for a year, and now it
won't boot up reliably. It's an MSI MS-7103 motherboard with a Celeron
D 2.66. I have one hard drive, a CD R/W drive, a wireless card and an
AGP DVI card.

It usually gets through POST and enters the Windows XP splash screen,
then it turns itself off. The odd thing is that if I can get it to
boot, it will run reliably all day long with no problem.

Here's what I've done so far:

*Replaced the CPU fan thinking it was a cooling issue. The new fan
works better, but I still have the problem.

*Reinstalled Windows.

*Completely disassembled the PC and put it back together again,
verifying all the connections.

Any ideas on what might be causing this, or what else I can try to
solve it?

Thanks!

Power-supply or memory problems come to mind; with the first being much
more likely. Bad caps on the motherboard come in third.

Don't forget cables to the hard-drives as well.
Had more troubles with poor cables ....

 

[Frank McCoy]

How did you determine that the video card was the problem?

I don't know about *him*; but replacing the card with a cheap one and
seeing if it runs is the usual method.

Old/cheap video cards can be had for a song, if you sing it yourself.

 

[Ed Medlin]

Power-supply or memory problems come to mind; with the first being
much
more likely. Bad caps on the motherboard come in third.

Don't forget cables to the hard-drives as well.
Had more troubles with poor cables ....

Failed or failing PSUs always are the first thing to come to my mind
when a system begins having startup problems. On startup, that is when a
PSU is strained to the max and when you see problems begin to emerge.


Ed