Power Failure to PC

feival

My mother in law has a fairly basic PC running XP (that is perfectly suitable for her needs mind you). Recetly it has been shutting down without warning from what appears to be a power failure. The symptons are as follows:

• PC switches itself off without warning
• The Numbers lock light on the keyboard remains permanently lit indicating there is still power
• Using the power on/off button has no effect whatsoever
• The PC can only be restarted once the PC power plug is removed and reconnected at the wall

I am guessingthe power into the PC is fine but somehow the power distribution within the PC itself is the problem. Can anyone think what could be happening. The PC has an AMD Duron 1.79 GHz processor runs XP and has 256Mb of memory.

Tufty2k

Sounds like the PSU is faulty or isn't powerful enough. Have new devices recently been added?

espresso

Could it be overheating? Once restarted, how long does it run for?

Tufty2k

Good point, could be overheating too. Has it been moved recently too?

feival

Thanks. Same original PSU, same fan and it has not been moved at all nor has any additional hardware been added. I know that on my work laptop I get a warning if it overheats and I would expect the same here? Fair call though since the fan is sometimes quite noisy in recent times so perhaps that is failing and causing over heat? I will open it up later and give it a good clean since that could help.

Zagu

Ive had this type of problems before, and have sorted it out by taking the cards out, removing the CPU cooler (I found one cooler full of dirt), giving it all a good clean, and then making sure all the contacts are good, both on the cards and from the PSU to the motherboard. It might not work, but at least you'll know that you have a genuine fault, and its not just a dodgy connection somewhere.

After that, if the problems are still there, Id take the PSU out of another PC and swop them over. Intermittent problems really arent much fun.

feival

Thanks. Now that I have opened it up I can confirm it was filthy - in particular the CPU processor! Hopefully the clean should work. Whilt I am here perhaps I can ask another question. I belive that memory is cheap these days and I culd buy 256Mb RAM very cheaply (it is DDR 400MHz). I presume that I am right that it is cheap and also that this should give a decent improvement to performance when a few apps are open? Again, any help will be gratefully appreciated. Thanks.

albertross_2

512 upwards is good for XP, try https://www.crucial.com

feival

Wow - it is much more expensive than I thought! For a ASrock K7s(XE+ motherboard they want $36 for just 256Mb. Might jsut leave it as it is for the time being!

http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=K7S8XE%2B