Wierd behavior or not?

[ingeborgdot]

If you know anything about this please help me out. I am about done building my new machine. Well, anyway I started it up just to make sure everything was working like I have always done before I finish. I shut it down and when I went to restart it it would flash on and off and on and off and would not stop until I shut off power. It would continue to do this until I reset cmos. I tried again and it did it again. If you are familiar with this problem or if there even is a problem let me know. Thanks.

 

[pdyckman@comcas]

Could you be a little more specific regarding this ' shutting on and off'? I am wondering if you mean the machine shuts off 100%...then restarts itself...which I don't think you mean...do you? Also, what do you mean when you say you start it up "before you finish"? How can you start it before it's finished? I mean it.

 

[ingeborgdot]

Yes, I mean the power would shut off for a short period and shut down for about a second and then it would restart and continue this process until I powered it off. I have always started (or powered up) the computer before any os is installed to check for power to all things. I then go into bios and check things there, that's what I mean.

 

[Daveskater]

Sounds to me like a PSU problem

 

[ingeborgdot]

No, I don't think so after experimenting some more. It will run perfectly with stable readings for many hours. It only happens when I shut it down for just a short period to work on things in the inside of the computer. When I go to turn it back on after it had been running it does it then. I clear the cmos and it starts right up and will run for hours. I now think it had to do with the bios and not having the os installed.

 

[Daveskater]

Ok, if you're sure it's not a PSU problem then my next thought is the motherboard

 

[kirock]

It's very common to mount the mobo incorrectly or forget to use insulating washer if/where required and thus cause a short from some mobo trace to chassi ground. Can you get it to stay on long enough to install the OS?

 

[ingeborgdot]

Yes, it will stay on for as long as I want it to stay on. I have now installed the os and it has been running for over 20 hours with the os. Restarting and shutting down and restarting don't seem to effect it with the os installed. I believe it was nothing electrical, but dealing with the bios. It always cleared up when I cleared the cmos.