New PC - Ran for 3 Days, Now Will Not Start

[dlf7431]

Building my first PC:

MB ASUS P4P800SE 865PE/ICH5
CPU P4/3.2EGHz 800M 478P/1MB HT
DUAL DDR 1GB|PC3200XLPRO CORSAIR
VGA MSI|FX5900XT-VTD128 8X 128MB
CASE ANTEC|MID TOWER SONATA

plus CD-RW, DVD-RW, 160 Gig HD, AOPEN Sound Card.

Worked fine for 3 days, then it just shut down like a power failure hit it. When I tried to reboot, the lights came on, HD was access once or twice and then it just shuts off, it is not on long enough for splash screen to come up on monitor, maybe about 6 seconds. In addition, if I try to start the PC immediately after, it shuts down much more quickly each succusseive try, so the next time I try it takes about 4 secs to shutdown and so on. If I then wait about 15 min or so, it takes about 6 seconds again.

Memory appears fine as it is Corsair with activity lights on, so with case open the lights all flash, so I am assuming RAM is ok.

Any Ideas for a newb at building PCs.

Thanks.

Dave

[gwallen4]

Might be a heat problem. Make sure the CPU fan is working properly. If so, I would disassemble the cpu heat sink, and reinstall it, using new thermal compound.

[dlf7431]

I replaced stock fan with CPU FAN COOLERMASTER ICB-V83 JT4 and used Arctic Silver Thermal Paste, CPU temp at Idle (which it was at time it shutdown) was 37 to 38 C.

I plan on taking it in to the office and having our IT people look at it to see if they can figure out.

Thanks for input.

[Jacko]

Definatly sounds like a heat problem similer to what i had not too long ago. In that instance it was an overheating video card. If you can get hold of another video card, try it out!

[Jiggy]

Is the power supply fan spinnig ?

Do you have a spare power supply unit and cord to try ?

After that, boot the computer with only video card, one stick of memory, and cpu/heat sink.

[gwallen4]

Yeah. I agree with Jiggy. It's time for a barebones boot. Some component is overheating and bringing down the system.

[dlf7431]

Power Supply Fan is running.

CPU Fan is set to full on and is running as expected.

Just gone done trying different Vid Card same thing happened, pulled out audio card, but did not try only one mem stick, would that make a difference?

Just thought of something that may be could have lead to problem.

With ASUS, you get AI Boost SW. I had that loaded and really was not sure what it was for (overclocking, etc). Got tired of it popping up at XP start, then also read it was for, and just decided until I get used to the PC and not to be tempted to OC yet, I uninstalled it. When uninstalling I got 2 error messages related to spinw??.dll.

I may have set it to OC +3% not knowing what I was doing, but thought I cancelled out of it.

I am pretty sure it was the next time I ran PC and after about 15 minutes it shutdown on its own. Could that have anything to do with it, and if it does how would one go about resetting the bios with out being able to get machine up and running.

In anybody's opinion what are the chances that it could be mother board?

Thanks, will keep trying.

DLF

[dlf7431]

Just to give an update -

Tried with Video Card I know is working - No change in boot up.
Pulled out Audio Card - No Change in Boot up
Tried with each mem stick individually - No change in boot up.

That leaves just the CPU or the MB, unfortunately I don't have an extra P4 CPU or ATX MB laying around.

[dlf7431]

RESOLUTION FOUND:

It was a CPU issue. In installing the CPU, two fo the nylon screws on the mounting brackets that come attached to the MB became loose, therefore the heatsink had poor connection to the CPU. I reset the nylon screws and attached to fan, and it now boots.

I would have never discovered this, but had one of my company's IT guys take a look, and he discovered.

Thanks for assistance, from posts here I had it narrowed down to CPU or MB.

Dave

[Jacko]

Glad to hear things are sorted.

[gwallen4]

Up and running is always good.