Help Pls - computer gone loopy - keeps switching itself on and off

travel_freak

Hi,

I hope someone can help! Just recently my desktop PC appeared to cut out/lose power.

It had a very old extension lead on it and when I moved this it crackled! I opened the plus of the lead today and only the live earth was properly screwed in place and the earth and neutral were hanging about inside the plug loose!!

Just before I switched off the PC to investigate the lease if started making loud beeping noises and then it rebooted itself.

Now it keeps rebooting whenever I switch it on, especially when I put in my Vodafone dongle and try to get online (dongle seems fine as it's working well on the laptop.

Now I'm worried the electrics might have fried something onside the tower or whether I have a virus. It has continued to reboot itself every few minutes and means I can't get online with the deskop at all.

Any tips gratefully received!!

Many thanks in advance.

GunJack

power surge could have damaged USB lines, appened to me once...may have to disconnect stuff inside to get it to reboot..and start from there

trcooke

The beeping is your motherboard telling you there is a problem and the pattern of the beeps tells you what it is. If you let us know what make and model of PC you have and the beep pattern (it'll be a pattern of short and long beeps, eg. short long long short) I may be able to find out some more details about it. You may also be able to find this information in the manual for your motherboard if you have it.

It'll be worth doing a quick check that your keyboard is plugged in properly as this is one of the things your motherboard will complain about. It's happy without a mouse but not without a keyboard.

There's a good chance that there's going to be some cost involved in fixing your PC as it's almost certainly hardware failure caused by your iffy power source but if we can narrow it down then we'll have saved you some money by not paying some chap to work out what's wrong.

travel_freak

Hi

Many thanks for your messages.

It's a Hewlett Packard, but not sure of the model etc. It has stopped beeping now - it only did one lot of beeping, from memory these were constant sounding, rather than long and short ones.

When first switched on it seems to be okay for a while. I tried opening Explorer and a Word doc without problem.

Then when I put in my mobile USB dongle the screen flashes up with "power saving enable" and it reboots itself. Maddening!

If it is damage to the USB ports please does anyone have any information on how I could fix this?

Or, if not a problem with the USB ports please does anyone know anything else I might try to get it up and running again?

I'm definitely going to get one of those power surge protector things now...!!

Many thanks in advance.

esbo

Can you disable/change the power saving options? (control panel).

travel_freak

Hi Esbo

I'll have a look at that but I'm not sure that that will solve it because it is not only powering off it is rebooting itself. Will have a look though and many thanks for the suggestion.

bristolleedsfan

travel_freak wrote: »

Then when I put in my mobile USB dongle the screen flashes up with "power saving enable" and it reboots itself. Maddening!

I get that with one of my PCs, putting and using the "dongle" in another USB slot was the solution for me.

If you find that is your solution but say hey but i need all the USB slots that I have then buying a USB hub ( powered is superior) would be cheaper than taking your laptop to a PC shop for repair.

This is just an example, im not saying it would be the best one to get. ( Ud plug it into the USB socket that doesnt cause any problems assuming that you determine that one USB slot causes problems whereas the other doesnt.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/USB-2-0-4-Port-POWERED-Hub-Inc-PSU-SENT-TODAY_W0QQitemZ380056048278QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item380056048278&_trkparms=72%3A1121%7C39%3A1%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C240%3A1318&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

esbo

travel_freak wrote: »

Hi Esbo

I'll have a look at that but I'm not sure that that will solve it because it is not only powering off it is rebooting itself. Will have a look though and many thanks for the suggestion.

Yes it's not completely logical suggestion but you never know with computers, it could be a software 'thing'.
Another possibilty is that the dongle draws down the power below a critial level for one
reason or another, maybe because it is already at a critical level or because it 'activates' an existing fault.
I guess the power lead faulty could have caused sparking which might have damaged capacitors or transistiors on the power supply.
However, as you get a message etc.... it seems it is shutting down in a orderly fashion, perhaps.

Also I have seen it written that when you have these kinds of problems booting etc.. it advises to remove all USB devices so they seem to do something 'funny'.

You could try disconnecting something which consumes power which is not essential, like a CD/DVD drive which might give you some idea of what type of problem you have, especailly if the problem disappears, you never know!!

I think I have also found some USB slots seem to work better than others.