Boot Up Snag

[seftonbarn]

Here goes - first post. I think I have a hardware snag. Turned PC off last evening (using the push button on the front of the PC without switching off rocker power switch at the back) turned it on this morning and although there were lights on and whirring noises nothing showed on the screen. Bit alarming. I decided I would power it down by disconnecting it from the mains and leaving it for a few moments. Did this and about 20 minutes later I switched on again and I did get some signs of life on the monitor. All the white on black text appeared on the screen and then the graphics of the Windows XP Boot process - then all of a sudden the screen went black again - nothing. I waited to listen for the Windows XP start up tune and there was nothing - hard drive and pwer lights still on. I powered it down and went off to work. 4 hours later I phone up my son and asked him to try and turn it on and it worked fine. I then asked him to reboot and it returned to the same snag (only getting half way through the boot). I don't knbow if its anything to do with it but the graphics card (Radeon X700) has a glowing red light on it permanently (it always has done) - unless you completely power down the mains - could it be something to do with this getting hot???

[hiredgoonz]

Need to clarify a few things to troubleshoot this. Although using the front switch would most likely power the system down the same as selecting Shut Down from within Windows, it could have been that the system went into Hibernate instead. If so, the no video isn't all that surprising, a lot of systems do funny things with powersaving, I'd check the BIOS to see what the power settings are.

I don't think the light on the graphics card is overheating it, LEDs run very cool. That said, an overheated video card can cause system lockups/crashes, I just don't think that's your issue...

[seftonbarn]

Things are now getting worse. last night it started OK. After I'd finished what I had to do (ac couple of hors later) i thought I'd try a restart. It booted into windows fine but then after about 2 minutes the screen went blank. The power on light at the fron of the PC remained on. Since then It won't even boot up so far for me to be able to get into the BIOS and check the settings as advised. It's powering up. Any ideas what i should do next????

[hiredgoonz]

Wow, that could be almost anything...overheating issue with the CPU or vid card, memory problem, marginal PSU, component/driver problem.

Some stuff to try, easy to harder:

-check the CPU temperature in the BIOS (hopefully it will get that far)
-insure all fans are working and all heatsinks are clean
-try reseating the RAM
-remove all cards except for the video and unplug all peripherals and see how it works
-do you have a spare PSU? You could swap that out...