I have an Athlon 1gHz which has recently started to misbehave.

After booting it gets about 10secs through the boot process then automatically powers down. If I switch the power off and wait ten minutes I can then try again. The power down does not happen at the same time in the boot process, sometimes it might last 15 secs, other times only 1 second.

Any ideas as to what might be the fault?

Thanks
Keith

Might be overheating. Open the case and watch to see if the CPU fan is spinning when you start the machine.

The two typical causes, especially that early in the process would be heat or power supply, with power supply being my first guess, unless the heatsink fan has died.

Post back with complete specs........especially power supply size, and number/type of devices connected.

Thanks for the quick responses.

Heatsink fan is fine. Full spec is:

Athlon 1gHz on AZ11E motherboard
CD-RW, DVD, Floppy, Hard Drive
Cards: Graphics, network, sound, modem
128mB memory
Power Supply Macron MPT-301 300W

Keith

Any more details about the CPU cooler and the video card......

DId you install any new deivces right before it started doing this?

If so remove the last installed device.

Are you getting any beeps when this happens?

Check that the heatsink is flush on the CPU.

Try lessening power usage -- unplug the CDRW and DVD, remove the network card, sound card and modem. See if it stays up then.

The graphics card is a Hercules 3d Prophet MX. The fan cooler is labelled "Innovative DC Brushless Fan Motor", 12V 0.21A. Nothing new has been added in the last six months and then it was only the netwrok card.

I'll try the suggestion of removing most of the devices and see if it works. Back in a few minutes.

Cheers
Keith

Would you believe ...

Took off cover and tried to start, but powered off as explained before.

Removed three cards and disconnected DVD and CD. Powered OK
Reconnected all one by one and each time it started OK.
Reconnected all the wires and cables. Still OK
Replaced cover, put PC back where it came from. Still OK.

Now its running fine playing an Elvis tune

Any ideas what the problem might have been. It hasn't booted properly for several days.

Thanks
Keith

Maybe a problematic power supply? I'm not sure. We'll see what mjc thinks. Did you remove/replace the motherboard power connectors? Or even wiggle them? Could be an iffy connection there. Is the power supply fan running? If not, the power supply could be overheating.

I had already tried disconnecting and reconnecting every connector in sight to check for dodgy connections. Didn't do that this time though. Power supply fan has always been running happily.

Another observation - when this problem first arose, a few days ago, the PC would occasionally boot properly, usually after leaving it for half an hour. And once it had booted it ran fine. But after a shutdown it would power off during the reboot. If it was a problem with the power supply overheating then it could have shutdown while in Windows rather than only during the boot process.

So a dodgy connection, or a dodgy chip, sounds a better explanation to me. There must be some components on the motherboard that look after powering off. Maybe one of them is misbehaving?

Keith

And now its broken again. I tried to reboot this morning and the PC is up to its old tricks, powering down after 10 seconds. I am going to replace the power supply and see if that helps!

Thanks sleddog and mjc for all the comments last night.

Keith