Dead CPU?

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poertner_1274

poertner_1274

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Ok, so last night my power went out. Well I go to turn on my computer this morning and it gets throught he POST fine, even starts loading windows drivers (I have it set on /sos on boot) then gets to the screen where it checks my hard drives and restarts. I have had problems with cold boots before, but this time I have let it go through a few restarts to warm it up.
Well now after it restarts my mobo says "Your CPU may have a problem" over and over. Last time I had this problem it was my motherboard that died. I will try to reseat the CPU and see if that helps somehow, but I doubt it.
Also, how could this have happened, it was behind a nicec surge protector, and all my other componenets on that surge protector are fine?
When it is posting it detects all my devices fine as well as the proccessor as what it is supposed to be at the correct speed.

This is strange, any suggestions?
 
Well, my first suggestion would not be to panic quite to much. OK, you may well be right and everything is fried, however that's not necessarily the case, and you SHOULD reseat the CPU, etc, before making that determination.

I, too, am concerned as to how a perfectly good, working CPU just died for no apparent reason - was this an old chip?
 
It is a 1.2GHZ Tbird,

And to make things more strange, I decided to let the CPU 'warm up' while sitting in the bios, as it has no problem doing that, and the longer I let it sit there the longer I get to get into windows. Last time I'm not sure how long it sat in the bios, but it booted all the way into windows and started loading my startup items, and then turned off again. I really thing the problem is that it just doesn't like cold starts, and it needs to get up to temperature......but maybe taht is just silly. The temperature of the CUP right now is 39C/102F, when I first turned it on it said something like 89F, so it is warmin up. And I have never turned this computer off excpet for a restart where it gets turned right back on.
I'm gonna let it sit in the bios for a bit and try to start it up later and see how far it gets. After I reseat the CPU though.
 
For what its worth, that's starting to sound like a fault.

Have you flashed your BIOS, or performed any hardware upgrades recently?
 
Nope haven't changed anything pretty much since I built it a year and a half ago.

Ok just reseated and the temp is back to 84F, turned it on and it turned off again at checking drive integrity. So I am giong to let it sit in the bios for a little while and let it think about what it has done!!! :)
 
Ok, it sat in the BIOS for 15 minutes and still turned off, so I think something is wrong with the OS itself. I am running checkdisk now with boot floppy
 
Ok when it loads to the desktop it turns off the computer, but the HDD light stays on, so I have to hold the power button to get it to turn all the way off. Does this lead to a motherboard problem?

Also, in dos I tried to check out my C: drive and when I type c:\ it takes me to my real D drive. Does that mean that my C: drive is totally messed up? But I can almost boot to it?
 
Have you tried switching the CPU with another working one? I had a rather similar problem like ours. Before my CPU died, i had a few random reboots for no reason while in windows, after that my pc went wacko and started reboot itself again after startup. Later my pc was not able to post.

Base on my experience, there is high chance that the CPU is about to die, however like what Phat mentioned, the mainboard might have problems too.
 
Well I don't have another laying around so I can't really check. All my other computers are a little older than this one, and this one is old itself. Iwish I did though
 
I put in my XP CD to install it to a different hard drive, and it told me that my original one had problems would I like to try to fix them, I chose yes and it is insatlling right now. I'll let you konw how it turns out.
 
Ok, I got the automated system recovery to work, and now everything is going well, no data was lost and it is working fine.

Only problem is that I have to reinstall some drivers and stuff. Not biggie compared to formatting and reinstalling everything.
 
"Your CPU may have a problem" usually indicates that your CMOS has been cleared.

How about replacing your CMOS battery in the system board?
 
Maybe there was a power surge when his machine was on, and it shorted his BIOS, and corrupted some important system files when the machine died.
 
I'm not sure, but I reinstalled my drivers, and turned it off again after it had to restart, well I got home 6 hours later and turned it on and I got the same error. So I restarted again and it booted up fine, except it is running a little slow. I guess I"m gonna back everything up and format and reinstall sometime within the week.
But as long as I leave it on it works ok.:confused:
 
If you restart your computer with a warm reboot (Restart button or restart through software), it keeps the settings, right?

If you shut off your computer or unplug it, it doesn't keep the settings? Yeah?

This is a sign of a bad CMOS battery. I suppose there could be other things wrong with your board that could cause your problem, but the CMOS battery is the only problem that would be worth fixing. :)
 
Well it appears that something is even more messed up than I thought. I figured out that why it was running so slow was because of it auto detecting all the new hardware in the system.
Anyway, I installed all the windows updates, and when it restarted now it get's stuck at the same spot it did last time, except now it doesn't turn off at all, it just sits there.
I have taken the drive out and am in the process of backing everything up on a spare computer for a format and reinstall, but do you really think it is a problem with my CMOS battery?
It appears I am having problems if I do a warm boot as well.

I think it is still something in the OS itself, and will be cleaned up by a simple format and reinstall.
We'll see I will attempt that tomorrow sometime, maybe, after I try a few more things.
 
Ok, I took a closer look at my mobo and it appears one of my capacitors is fried. It has brown stuff coming out the top of it, not bad, but noticable.
I'm sure this could be a problem with something.

I guess I'm going to try to head to compusa and get another mobo and put all my components on it to see if that solves the problem. If it does I'll try to find a good cheap board online somewhere. Anyway we'll see, just another update from a frusterated computer user.
 
Poert, the pic you sent me of the board shows three caps that look very suspect. It may be the angle or lighting but one looks swelled, which is a likely indication of fault, it also looks to have a little bit of brown stuff on the top. The one next to it looks like it has a good bit of the brown stuff coming out of it. The other one seems to have a grey discoloration on top but its hard to tell if that is just the casing being discolored, or if it is and indication of a problem. I would suggest checking them if you know how(this is somewhat difficult to explain) If you have a DMM with a capacitance function, just use that, its easier than explaining how to charge and test the caps.
 
yeah I agree, I think 2 of them are blown, but do you think flashing my bios would help any? It was just something I thought about trying, I guess I have nothing to lose if my mobo is already bad to begin with....of course I could fix it and use it in a spare system later on. I think I'll do that after I get a new board. I am thinking about getting the ecs k7s5a. To fit my t-bird right now and sdram, as well as being expandable to an xp and ddr later down the road.
 
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