Sometimes PC powers w/o booting. Anyone seen this before?

[Mugsy]

I was hit with a bad power supply recently. It grounded out somehow and burned up. Since then, I've been experiencing random problems that I know must be due to electrical damage. Now I'm trying to narrow it down.

Sometimes, with no apparent pattern, when I turn my PC on, everything will power up (lights fans, etc), but the computer never boots. Hitting reset doesn't help. Turning it off and then right back on doesn't help. Only turning it off, waiting at least 15 minutes, and then trying again has the most success. The problem seems to be getting worse, occuring more often.

The situation sounds very much like the CPU is overheating and I must wait for it to cool, but this problem can occur even if I'm turning my PC on for the first time after being off all night.

My video card *may* also be damaged, with green artifacts poping up all over my screen (*especially* with my TV tuner and jpg images), though I had to update the driver in the middle of all this and the driver and/or installation might not have been perfect.

I've run Western Digital's drive test software to see if my drives were damaged, but it says they're okay. Windows "benchmark" programs to test the cpu don't indicate any problem, and I'm using the PC right now with no problems. It just took me a half hour to get it to boot this morning, and the only culprits I can think of are a bad cpu (Athlon XP 3200+ that's barely a year old) and/or my motherboard (Soyo KT600, also a year old and showing no noticeable problems while running). I cleared and reset the BIOS this morning, also to no improvement.

Anyone else seen this before and can point me in the right direction?


Athlon XP 3200+ with 400MHz FSB and all-copper heatsink with 5500rpm 60mm fan.
Soyo Dragon Ultra Platinum MoBo with VIA chipset and Pheonix bios.
512MB PC3200 ram.
Three HD's, all Western Digital IDE drives.
Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB vid card with Artic Cooling fan.
480watt (20amp) 24pin PSU
WinXP Pro with sp2

 

[iss]

I would say yuo are probably allready on the right track, suspecting the CPU and or the Mobo. of the two I would say it is probably the mobo. CPU's seldom exhibit intermitent problems when they are defective but mobo's certainly do.

 

[Rik]

I'd go along with that, seen it many times. You could have a look at all the capacitors on your mobo to see if any are domed up or have leaked. I personally get my fingers to the chips to see if any get unduly hot but don't recommend that unless you are sure of what you are doing.