Turn it on, It turns itself off

[Guest]

I have trying to fix a W2K Dell Dimension that when powered up,it will power
itself down within ~ 2 minutes. This behavior repeats on all users accounts
on the machine.

The machine will boot up in safe mode, and stay on. I have turned off all
the background TSR's that I can find. The check disk utility ran normally,
but did not fix the problem.

Would anyone have any suggestions?

 

[Steve Parry [MVP]]

I have trying to fix a W2K Dell Dimension that when powered up,it
will power itself down within ~ 2 minutes. This behavior repeats on
all users accounts on the machine.

The machine will boot up in safe mode, and stay on. I have turned off
all the background TSR's that I can find. The check disk utility ran
normally, but did not fix the problem.

Would anyone have any suggestions?

Have you got an up to date antivirus on it?

http://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/sasser.mspx

 

[Leythos]

I have trying to fix a W2K Dell Dimension that when powered up,it will power
itself down within ~ 2 minutes. This behavior repeats on all users accounts
on the machine.

The machine will boot up in safe mode, and stay on. I have turned off all
the background TSR's that I can find. The check disk utility ran normally,
but did not fix the problem.

Sounds like a virus that was going around about 6 months ago. Run AV
scanner in safe mode (with current updates) and it should correct the
problem.

 

[Guest]

Steve, thanks for replying.I ran the virus scan (with current definititons),
and it turned up nothing. Any other ideas?

 

[Guest]

Leythos, I appreciate your suggestion. I ran a virus scan with current
definitions, and turned up nothing. Any other ideas?

 

[Geoffw]

hardware problem ? heat ?

Geoff

message

Leythos, I appreciate your suggestion. I ran a virus scan with current
definitions, and turned up nothing. Any other ideas?

 

[Leythos]

Leythos, I appreciate your suggestion. I ran a virus scan with current
definitions, and turned up nothing. Any other ideas?

If it's doing a shut-down, and not just turning itself off, then it's a
virus of some form, Use Norton AV 2004 or AVG with updates.

If it's doing what looks like a power cycle - rebooting without doing a
proper shutdown, then it could be several things:

1) Clean all dust out of system - compressed air on all fans, heat-
sinks, and out of the power supply - then clean all covers and air holes
in case.

2) Power Supply - did you add any hardware to the system before this
started? Many systems come with PSU's that are too small. A 380W PSU is
about $40 at most computer stores - simple to change/test that way.

3) Defective hardware - meaning that a hard-drive, floppy drive, fan,
cd-rom drive is drawing too much current from the PSU. Remove anything
you don't need - all you need is video and HD to see if it will stay
running, remove all other cards.

Do this and let us know - also, please BOTTOM POST REPLIES, it's the
norm on Usenet.