Somethings dying...but what?

[Jaiidan]

Hi all

Well after several months of steady running my MCE 2005 box has started to show odd symptoms of something major dying.

came home the other night and found the activation prompt up on the main screen saying hardware had changed !! Finally figured out that it seemed to have lost one of my onboard GLAN sockets. After a while diagnosing what was going on, I reset the bios and all was well again.

Now also occasionally (at the moment )when I try to wake it up the power light s come on etc but it just sits there with no input to my screen... The discs don`t seem to spin up. The only way to cure it is to physically switch off the PSU and then back on again and its fine.

I suspect my motherboard is on the way out but was wondering if anyone has had any similar symptoms and possible fixes

Cheers guys and gals

J

[CraigMBecket]

Hi Jaiidan,

Had a similar problem a while back and it turned out to be the PSU was not really man enough for the job. Theoretically it was more than adequate but sometimes it began behaving in a similar manner. Swapped it for a more powerful one and majically everything cleared up. The PSU that played up was a 450 W one and the MCE had 6 drives and 4 tuners spread over three cards, all calc sheets said it was more than adequate. The PSU was not on its way out because I have used it for more than a year in another computer, not an MCE and only three disks, without a problem.

Not of course saying this is definately your problem but if you have a spare PSU or can swap one out of another computer it would be worth a try.

Craig.

[ryan_t]

The power supply could definiatly be the culprit. As you mentioned though, it could also be the motherboard.

A couple of other things you can check fairly easily...
1. Check for distended capacitors on your motherboard. Capacitors look kind of like AA batteries (sticking up) - you want to look at them all, and check to make sure that there is no buldging or leaking on any of them. If even one is buldged or leaking, you need a new motherboard. Here is a quick guide on checking capacitors: http://www.ehow.com/how_2162895_iden...-computer.html.

2. Check the memory. You can download a copy of Memtest, google search and you'll find it (and it's free ). Then burn it to a cd and boot your computer to the CD to let it run a scan on your memory.

[ExtremePC]

It does sound like the power supply, from expirience I've found that split or multi rail power supplies fail a lot more than single rail. Split rail power supplies give you a total figure of X watts but in fact thats only when you have everything balanced nicely across all the 12v rails, if you put too much or even draw more from one rail than the other by a largish amount it tends to kill the power supply after time.

Single rail power supplies on the other hand can give you the whole rating across the signle 12v rail and you don't have to balance everything out. Note that a single rail power supply doesn't mean theres only one run of power connectors coming out of the PS, all it means is that all the runs come from a common rail inside the PS.

Split or Multi rail power supplies have connector runs that come from independant regulated 12v rails that add up to the total power rating of the power supply but individual runs are only rated at far far less each. Also note that due to the design putting more on one rail than the other will eventually cause the PS to fail even if its being under used!

[Jaiidan]

Thanks guys

I will dig deeper and check out the PSU.... didn`t really think it was this coz really its not running much and its a decent one ( see sig ) but nothing lasts for ever ey!

I`ll take a butchers at the motherboard too while I`ve got it apart and check those capacitors

Thanks guys

J