Hi All,

Just turned my other pc on and it gets about 10 secs into boot up (still black screen) and just powers off and stops. If I try to power it back on immediately it wont have it, but waiting say 10 mins and it seems of.

This is the kinda question I would normally answer myself, but I havent seen this before.

Any ideas??

cheers

Andy

does it beep or anything ? does it work after the 10 mins ?

this is usually a sign of it being unable to detect a component such as memory or video card, or could indicate a problem with the power supply. In the manual it may explain what the different sequence of beeps indicates, if it beeps.

I built one yesterday that would power on, fans started going, hard disk going etc. but no display and no beeps. Turned out to be a memory chip connection, swapped the chips around in the slots and away it went.

Ken

Hmm I think one of the power cables to the hard disk maybe dodgy because this time it powered up, heard the werring noise then a blip in the werr as if a momentaryloss of power to the hdd, then it hung. Have swapped them for the ones on the CD roms to test

AP

Be very careful - this is what was happening to me last week, then when it finally booted there was 3 loud pops, lots of smoke and it fried EVERYTHING - Bios, Mobo, CD rom, CD burner, RAM, Keyboard, monitor, P3 processor etc etc

Had to pend £1k on a new system on Saturday - lost all my MP3's :(

ouch!

I dont wanna lose all my mp3s, soulseek wouldnt be the same without me on it!

Seems to have settled down now..........

dodgy memory seating, if you ask me. I'd take the memory out and then reseat it in the slot.

Do you get any thing on the screen at all when you first turn it on, BIOS screen etc?

If you do it could be a problem with the power supply. I have just replaced 19 power supplies in PCs, these only powered up for about 2 seconds tho. Its something to do with not running enough amps or summic I was told by the manufacturer of the power supplies. After a while, due to wear, they dont provide enough power when you have all your drives etc plugged in! try taking off all your drives etc and see if it stays on.

If you dont get any display, do you get any beeps? If get beeps what do they sound like?
If no beeps and no display could be memory video or processor or even motherboard.

Andy,

Is it an ATX motherboard and if so, does your power switch immediately turn off the PC. If so, it maybe a sticking power switch. One of the lads in our office asked me to look at his PC as it would switch itself off about 5-10secs after he switched it on. I completely stripped the thing out the case, then thought I'd try the power switch jumper on the motherboard. I could get it to work bypassing the case switch, then discovered it was the actual power switch catching on the case.

So I'd press the button (it would turn on), the plastic case switch would spring back, but the actual switch (inside and connected to the PSU) was stuck and the motherboard (rightly) thought the switch had been pressed again and switched itself off.

Sounds bizarre, but worth a quick look before you spend serious money on replacing parts.

Stefan

Similar thing happened to me, pc would boot, then beep, then switch off after getting past the bios/setup screen. Jumpered the boot sequence different, didnt make a difference, reset that then. On opening the case, noticed that the IDE cable to the HD had got squashed in the tilt mechanism on the case, so had cut into the IDE strip, replaced this and all working :D