Three steps to (silicon) heaven.

[wiltshirejohn]

Sorry to plagiarise your subject line Mouseroo but I think something in my rig  has taken the first step

My system has recently started playing up in that when I power up, things start normally for about ONE second and then everything seems to die for about two or three seconds. Then this start-stop cycle repeats for anything up to about ten times. Then it boots normally. Although everything subsequently runs normally this is obviously stressing components unnecessarily.

Further info:
         The start-stop cycle repeats up to a dozen times when restoring from hibernation but only 2 or 3 times when starting from the 'off' state.

         The motherboard (Asus P5B deluxe) has a power indicator LED on the board - this stays on all the time whilst the fans and the single SATA HDD go up and down like a who****  stop it! Wrong board . 

          The PSU is the Antec Neo HE550

My initial thoughts are  a) something in the depths of the motherboard 
                      or       b) 12V rail problems in the PSU.

Any other thoughts would be welcome.


      Regards - wiltshirejohn

[Rik]

I'd lean towards the PSU, John, given the difference when starting from cold, but that's just a gut instinct.

[Lance]

It seems to be a bad week for computer failure. I've just had my motherboard fail on my desktop 

[Rik]

Ouch. I wonder if we can blame yesterday's switch problem. 

[Glenn]

I would start with a disk check then a memory test

From a Dos prompt type chkdsk /r or right click on the drive icon in Windows select properties > Tools > Error Checking tick both boxes then reboot.

Memtest, create a bootable cd using the iso http://www.memtest86.com/ boot off that and let it test the ram for up to 24 hours

[Sebby]

It sounds to me like the PSU or motherboard. Is it possible to borrow a PSU off someone to rule that out? That would be easier than trying the motherboard first.

[Mouseroo]

Hi Wiltshirejohn,

Sorry to hear that you're suffering from hardware woes as well 
I think you've already been given the best advice:  Try to narrow down the component which is playing up.
In my case, I've opted to just go ahead and get a new PSU because:
If it is my PSU which is broken, then problem solved!
If it isn't my PSU, then I was going to upgrade my motherboard, CPU, graphics card and memory in the next few months anyway, so now I'll have a PSU beefy enough to handle them.

For what it's worth, I went for the Enermax Galaxy 850W supply, and Scan Computers were the cheapest for that model at £144.40.  Of course this is where somebody finds it cheaper and upsets me... 

I hope you get to the bottom of your problem.  Memtest is a good place to start because faulty RAM can be fine one minute, and horrible the next.

Keep us posted!

Andy

[Rik]

OTOH, Andy, Scan give good service.

[Glenn]

If you haven't ordered it yet, you can get free delivery

Sign up to AV Forums and you can get free delivery from Scan too http://www.avforums.com/forums/scan_offer.php

[wiltshirejohn]

Hmmmm...  Might have fixed it.

The PSU has two 12V leads, one 4 pin (longer) the other 8 pin (shorter). 

The motherboard has an 8 pin socket with 4 pins covered by a (removable) blanking plate.

When I built this thing about a year ago I used the longer 4 pin lead because it was easy to tidy the cables and the motherboard manufacturer (by the blanking plate) seemed to be saying that 4 pins were enough. (And so they were for about nine months!).

Anyways... I've stretched the 8 pin lead across the top of the video card and the CPU cooler - not pretty but it reaches...  just.     If this is a permanent solution then I'll buy an extender cable.

Now it fires up first time.  Just waiting for the cold snap this weekend for further testing. The problem always seemed worse when the room temperature was lower.

Regards - wiltshirejohn

[Rik]

  for you, John.

[Sebby]

Fingers crossed!

[wiltshirejohn]

Seems to be behaving itself most of the time. Just occasionally do I get the pulsing.

Just have to live with it I suppose    - well until it deteriorates or breaks completely.

The Antec web site does not seem too helpful either 


       Regards - wiltshirejohn