Constant restart... wtf?

[klopapier]

Hi there,

i have a problem and its really pissing me off. I have (well, i had) an Athlon XP 2000+, MSI KT4V mobo, ATI radeon 9500, 1x 512MB DDR 400 & 1x 512MB DDR 333, a pci Technisat DVB card, 10/100 pci LAN, an USB expansion port, 2 IDE HDD, CD-ROM & DVD-RW drives;
with Windows XP and Suse 10.2

About 2 weeks ago, the computer started acting kinda weird. I used to leave it running the whole day while i'm at university with no problems at all, but two weeks ago the pc started to fail, restarting itself every now and then for no aparent reason. One day i came home and found it hung up, black screen and no response.

I had to restart it and i saw some coloured pixels on the screen and while entering grub the screen was like de-syncing, flickering, like the signal was out of range. I couldn't get either linux nor windows to start. The pc will always restart after i choose "the current installed version of windows" to start and press enter.

I didn't know what it was so i started testing every part. When i finally got to change the cpu with my sisters athlon xp 1800+ the pc worked 2 days in a row without restarting itself, or being stuck in any way. It guessed it to be the problem so i bought myself a new cpu and a new mobo since i couldn't get any new Athlons.

I got a:
- Celeron D 3.06Ghz
- AsRock Conroe865PE mobo

Put everything in a ANOTHER tower, everything from the old tower but the new CPU and the mobo and to my surprise the problem still remains.
I have tested EVERY SINGLE PART, replacing it with working parts from other computers: HDD's, memory, power supply unit, graphic card, ..... and every time it always happens the same. I get to the point to choose the current version of windows in the start-up menu after choosing windows in the grub menu, press enter and the computer restarts....(then i start to see those coloured pixels again)

What the hell is wrong with it??? Can anybody help me?
THX in advance.

PS: Sorry for the long letter

 

[klopapier]

Psu??

hi,

me again. I just watched the H/W monitor in the BIOS and noticed the +3.3V value was way below...

CPU Temperature : 39ºC
Mobo Temperature : 33ºC

+ 3.30V @ ----> 2.560 - 2.608 <----- ?????
+ 5.00V @ ----> 5.256 - 5.280
+12.00V @ ----> 12.248 - 12.460

What does this mean? Busted PSU?? Any Sugestions??

 

[SNGX1275]

Yeh, that would definately be a cause for concern. I can't say for sure that that is the problem, but it is well below the normally accepted + or - 10%. Replace that and you should be fixed, if not post back.

 

[Tedster]

replace your PSU asap.

 

[klopapier]

problem solved

Hi again,

i bought myself a new 600W psu. It didn't actually solve the problem but the 3.3V value is now almost constantly at 3.4V.

I don't know if actually the old one made the system unstable with this or if it was the version of widnows i had on both HDDs' i tested it with, that just wasn't able to get along with the fact that i changed the mobo and the cpu.
Maybe the part where windows recognizes the new parts and starts installing the new drivers 4 everything (when a mobo changed) was busted...dunno...

I formatted one of the HDDs with QTparted and installed windows from zero and it worked. :bounce: