# Smoke, Pop, and won't boot up



## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

The story...

My wife sat down at her PC yesterday but couldn't get it to respond. She could hear the fans spinning but the monitor stayed blank. She tried rebooting but still nothing. An hour or so later she smelled smoke and unplugged it. I popped it open last night and tried bringing it up but got nothing other than the tiny motherboard light. No fans, no other lights, no beeps or chirps. Then I saw a little smoke coming from near the power supply and CPU so I unplugged it again.

Assuming it was a faulty power supply (despite working fine for the last six years with no changes) I dropped a new 500w unit in (the original was 250w) but nothing changed. Still just the tiny motherboard light. I cracked the old PSU open and investigated. It looked like one small thingy may have melted (unless it was made that way which would seem odd). I plugged it into the wall while it was completely disconnected from all PC components and after a few seconds there was a loud POP and more smoke. See photo below for where it was smoking and appeared to have melted.

Any ideas as to what might have happened? Any suggestions as to where I should start my troubleshooting? Maybe a new motherboard (compatibility seems pretty complicated). I'm assuming that since the new PSU didn't improve anything that there's another hosed component in there somewhere. I would have thought at least the new PSU's fan would have spun though. Hoping the hard drive is fine because there's a lot of data on there that we need and hoping this isn't going to be expensive. Any help is hugely appreciated!

I'm no computer genius although I've proven competent at swapping/upgrading the occasional component over the past few years after doing my research. Feel free to let me know if I'm in over my head too. I'd rather fix it myself but am good with escalating if this could get messy.

The PC specs...
Gateway 3200S (circa 2004)
Celeron 330 2.66 GHz CPU
Intel Seabreeze T3 Motherboard R0 microATX
Bestec 250w PSU
Full PC profile: http://support.gateway.com/support/srt/docs.asp?sn=0034600706


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## Tyree (May 10, 2009)

Low quality PSU's often take other hardware with them. 
A PC that old is probably not worth repairing.
The best option is to bench test.

1) Remove EVERYTHING from the case
2) Set the motherboard on a non conductive surface. The motherboard box is perfect for this. DO NOT PLACE THE MOTHERBOARD ON THE STATIC BAG! It can actually conduct electricity! We are going to try and assemble a running system outside of the case.
3) Install the CPU and heat sink. Intel Guide AMD Guide
4) Install 1 stick of RAM.
5) Install the video card and attach the power supply connection(s) to the card if your card needs it.
6) Connect the monitor to the video card.
7) Connect the power supply to the motherboard with both the 24pin main ATX Power connection and the separate 4 or 8 pin power connection.
8) Connect power to the power supply.
9) Do NOT connect ANYTHING else. Make sure you have the power connector on the CPU fan connected.
10) Use a small screwdriver to momentarily short the power switch connector on the motherboard. Consult your motherboard manual to find which two pins connect to your case's power switch. Then touch both pins with a screwdriver to complete the circuit and boot the system.

If all is well, it should power up and you should get a display. Then assemble the parts into the case and try again. If the system now fails to boot, you have a short in the case and need to recheck your motherboard standoffs.

If the system does not boot after this process, then you most likely have a faulty component. You'll need to swap parts, start with the power supply, until you determine what is defective.


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

Thanks Tyree. Good info. I'll try it.

On a whim I took the new PSU (Coolmax V-500) and stuck it in my other PC to verify that it was good. Nothing happened other than the motherboard light coming on. I'm assuming that means I need a better PSU for starters. I would've taken the PSU from my good PC and tried it in the bad PC but it has 24 pins and the bad PC has 20.


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

coolmax are low quality

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139003&Tpk=corsair+450w

you should be able to slide the last 4 pins off the 24 pin plug as they were made to fit both 20 and 24 pin


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

Yeah, I got the 4 pins off the coolmax unit (brand new out of the box) but the PSU from my good PC (300w no-name from Gateway) has a solid 24-pin connector that doesn't allow the 4 pins to separate. Off to try to find a Corsair or Seasonic.


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

it is unlikely the gateway psu would have been of any use in testing


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

OK, I figure it's wise to get everything on hand before starting this. I don't have any spare parts to start swapping things out so I'll have to purchase it all. I figure the most likely culprits are (in this order): PSU, motherboard, CPU, or memory (feel free to correct me). I have replacements picked out and have read lots of info so it sounds like they're all compatible. Any chance someone could double check my work to make sure this is correct? Here's what I'm planning on getting...

PSU - Corsair CMPSU-550VX (NewEgg) I figured with the add'l horsepower below, the 550w would be a safer bet than 450w.
Motherboard - Biostar G41D3G (NewEgg) 
CPU - Pentium Dual Core E6500 2.93 GHz (NewEgg)
Memory - Crucial DDR3 1066 (2GB since it's 32-bit XP)

I'm not trying to end up with anything sexy and high-powered, just competent for standard web browsing, email, and office-type work. Some music and photos but not much else. Am I on the right track? Other suggestions are welcome. Thanks!!!


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

there should not be any problems with those components

newegg have the 650 out $10 than the 550w at the momemnt


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## Tyree (May 10, 2009)

A better Mobo: ASUS P5G41T-M 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131622


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

Awesome. Thanks!


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## delaware74b (Feb 2, 2008)

What is the model number on that Bestec power supply that came with you Gateway? If it's ATX250-12E, chances are it took out your mobo when it failed. They are well-known for having a bad +5V SB (StandBy) circuit that go high voltage(6-12 volts) when they fail. The southbridge in and Intel board (and AMD) does not like anything over 5.5v on the standby. The first (and least expensive thing I would do is to try the mobo on a known-good power supply.


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

Yay. ATX-250-12E REV7. Worked great for six years then kaput. New PSU on order with the mobo, cpu, & ram to follow. Ready to replace it all if needed. Thanks for the heads up.

As expected. Installed new Corsair PSU in good PC and it came up fine. Moved it to the bad PC and got nothing. New mobo, CPU, & memory next & we'll see what happens.

Okay, all new parts (PSU, mobo, CPU, RAM) have been installed. I haven't booted up yet but am wondering now whether this'll be very straightforward. 

Some questions:

1. Will I need to reinstall XP? (The hard drive is still good and in pre-crash condition.) Being an off-the-shelf Gateway unit I didn't receive a Windows install disk with the PC. I just had to burn a system restore disk when I first got it. If XP reinstall is needed will this disc work?

2. Assuming XP install is needed, how does the MS registration work? With no XP disc I also don't have an XP serial number or anything to provide to MS to verify "authenticity" (or whatever).


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## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

1.the restore disk likely wont work however because you are putting the drive in a new board you have to A do a repair installation of windows and B install the motherboard drivers disk.

2. you could try to contact gatewat and tell them what has happened but the likely response will be get lost so my advice and you wont like this is you will have to purchase a copy of windows and format the hard drive and do a clean install. Meaning you will loose everything on that drive or you could buy another hard drive and a copy of windows do a clean install then set up the old hard drive in the computer (so you have two) and pull all your data of that drive into the new one then get shot of that drive.


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

Well I almost made it and ran into a new and presumably unrelated issue that's got me perplexed.

- I installed the new PSU, CPU, mobo, & RAM. No issues.
- Did a restore with the restore disk I created when the PC was new. It strangely seemed to work just fine and didn't require a call to MS to activate XP - I just did the XP Product Key stuff online.
- Got XP to boot up perfectly many times
- Got wireless networking to work great
- Downloaded all MS security updates and XP SP3
- Installed Kaspersky, Firefox, MS Office, & misc hardware drivers
- Restored Outlook Express WAB & WMDB files

Everything was working swimmingly well. No issues that I could detect and all applications were working great. After a few hour break (just one of many throughout the process) I noticed that the network connection wasn't responding. I rebooted and haven't gotten XP to load since, not even in safe mode. 

It's the same thing every time - power comes on, fans spin, and I get the black & white "Windows did not start successfully" message giving 5 options - Safe Mode, Safe Mode w/networking, Safe Mode w/command prompt, Last known good config, and Start Windows Normally. Regardless of which option I select, the XP loading screen displays for about 45 seconds before I hear the hard drive give a rirrirrirrir...rirrirrirrir...rirrirrirrir sound and it reboots itself, taking me back to the same "Windows did not start successfully" screen. 

BIOS says CPU temp is 89.5F/32C and MB temp is 91F/33C. All three fans are spinning. No idea what else to check. Hoping desperately that I don't have to start this over from scratch.

Got any ideas for me to try?


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## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

from what you describe sounds like the hard drive is on its way out. Do you hear a clicking sound from it?

try to keep getting into windows if you do download the hard drive manufacturers diagnostic utility to test the integrity of the drive.


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

I do hear clicking sounds although that doesn't seem like anything new. The new part is the pattern to the clicking.

Would the diagnostic utility be the same as a Drive Fitness Test? Hitachi has a OGT Diagnostic Tool but that appears to be for more recent models than mine (80GB Hitachi Deskstar HDS728080PLAT20)

I'm thinking the easiest way would be to pull the drive and put it in my other PC for the diagnostic stuff. Sound prudent?

I pulled the drive and can read everything just fine through Windows Explorer from the 2nd PC. I'm assuming that means the drive is probably OK and the problem lies elsewhere?


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

you need to run the diagnostic on the drive

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#OGT


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

I ran the diagnostic and it confirmed a corrupted sector so I had it perform a repair and the system booted up ok afterward. Would replacing the hard drive be a prudent move now or is it unlikely that the corruption was caused by a failing drive? (Note - After booting up post-repair I received the following message: "_One of the files containing the system’s registry data had to be recovered by use of a log or alternate copy_". I had recently made a minor registry change related to an Outlook Express data storage location so maybe I caused the problem?)

Found a new problem though. The system keeps going into what appears to be some kind of power saving or hibernation mode despite me disabling all related features under Display Properties --> Screen Saver --> Power. I can't figure out how to pull it out of this mode either. No mouse or keyboard activity has any effect, nor does the power button unless I hold it down for several seconds to shut the system down, then power it up.

There doesn't seem to be a pattern as to when it goes idle like this. Once it happened within 15-20 minutes of booting up, while I was watching a video and actively moving the mouse. All audio and video went blank. Other times it waits much longer. Right now it's been up for about 45 min without going idle. I checked BIOS but couldn't find anything obvious. Maybe an ACPI setting? Suspend mode is currently set to Auto but also has S1 and S3 options. From what I've read it sounds like these are only utilized if power saving mode were enabled.

Any ideas on how I can keep it from going idle like this, or at least successfully bring it out of this idle mode without powering the system off?


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## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

yep I would replace the drive.

pleas go into your bios and post here what it says for the temperatures and voltages.


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

I just checked and CPU temp went from 91F/33C to 95F/35C while I was jotting down numbers but it held steady at 95F/35C. I think I've seen it as high as 100F once.

MB temp was 98.5F/37C.

Voltage was...
- Vcore = 1.248V
- 3.3V = 3.360V
- 5V = 5.145V
- 12V = 12.144V


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## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

your voltages and temps seem ok were these from the BIOS?


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

Affirmative. Straight from BIOS.


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## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

so doesn't seem like your psu is knackered I would replace the hard drive because of the issues you are having.


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

I could see the corrupt sector problem being caused by the hard drive but it seems to me that the idle mode issue would have a different cause. Are you thinking they could both be caused by the hard drive? 

I'll go ahead and get a new hard drive but it would be nice to get a handle on the other problem in the meantime. Any recommendation on good hard drive models or brands? (high quality but modestly priced 100-300GB SATA)

By the way, it's been about 8 hours now and it hasn't gone back into idle mode yet. Probably will overnight though.

Update: The PC rebooted itself overnight last night. Annoying and frustrating. It never bothered to go into the mysterious idle mode though. Still working with the old hard drive.

Any thoughts yet as to whether the hard drive could actually be causing this, or if it's more likely to be something else?

By the way, feel free to move this to another forum if this one is no longer appropriate.


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

wd black edition

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=n82e16822136319


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

How about WD Caviar Blue? I actually ordered it yesterday morning since nobody had replied & I had to get things moving. Is there a reliability/durability difference between Black & Blue?


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## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

no there isn't


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

Still having problems.

I installed the new HD, copied full contents of old HD to new HD, unplugged old HD and booted up via new HD. It booted most of the way but won't finish. Just reboots itself repeatedly at various points during loading of XP and/or startup applications.

I plugged the old HD back in and it boots up fine and shows both HD's in Windows Explorer. I downloaded & ran the Western Digital diagnostics on the new HD and it passed with flying colors. No corrupt sectors but it still won't boot up fully via the new HD.

What's up with this thing?!? Any help is appreciated!!


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## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

did you install the motherboard drivers again?

did you do a repair install of windows?

you have to do the above if your setting up the new drive to be the bootable volume.


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

I used the WD Acronis True Image software and did an automatic Clone. Windows & drivers were present on the old drive so they would've been cloned along with everything else.


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

with just the new drive in boot into the recovery console and run

fixboot


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

OK, trying to revive this project again. 

dai, unless there's a way I'm not aware of, without the XP install disc I have no access to Recovery Console or fixboot. Any other ideas?


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

see if you can borrow a disk


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

Well, I borrowed an XP disc and ran fixboot. It wrote a new boot sector and seemed to complete successfully, albeit very quickly (only ran for a couple seconds). 

The issue wasn't resolved though. When I boot the PC up it loads Windows successfully about half the time. The other half it either goes into that weird sleep mode towards the end of the boot process or it reboots itself repeatedly midway through booting up.

Frustrated.


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

does it boot up ok and stay up in safe mode


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

I just tried Safe Mode a few times and it booted successfully each time.


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

in msconfig/startup

untick all the boxes and see if it boots normally

if it does retick one at a time rebooting and if it does continue doing the same and see if you can isolate the one causing the problem


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

No luck. I unchecked everything and rebooted. On boot-up it rebooted itself twice in a row.

I might add that once it boots up successfully (becoming increasingly rare - maybe 20% of the time now) it seems to stay up just fine and no issues are encountered until the next reboot.


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

run

chkdsk /r


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

Complete. It recovered a couple dozen orphaned files but the problems remain.


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

i think you need a clean install


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

I reformatted the new hard drive and restored the PC via the original Gateway restore disks back to the PC's brand-new just-arrived-in-the-mail state.

Result - No change. Still reboots itself and goes into sleep mode frequently. One correction though - contrary to what I stated earlier, it's not necessarily in the clear after Windows loads. It does reboot/sleep on other occasions as well, especially watching online videos.

Seems to me that it's gotta be a hardware issue. Motherboard or CPU?


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## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

CPus and motherboards rarely fail. Unless you dont treat them right i.e cooling etc

to me its either a psu or ram issue.


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

Are there any tests you'd recommend for isolating the issue to one hardware component?


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

I did a RAM test. Swapped positions of the two sticks, tried one stick in each slot, then the other in each slot. All scenarios produced the same reboot/sleep issue. The two sticks are a matched set although they were purchased at separate times so I'd think odds would be slim that they'd both be bad. I assume this eliminates them as the culprit.

One additional detail that may provide a clue? On the occasions now when it load Windows okay, as soon as I click to open anything it immediately reboots.

The only other thing that I can think of to try is using the power supply from my other PC. Both are high quality PSU's.

Running out of ideas.


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

a matched set of ram is bought as a pair,they are tested together by the maker so they can be sold as a matching pair


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

I guess I used the wrong terminology. They were identical sticks but not a "matched set". It seems to me like a moot point though since the issue still occurs when only one stick is in there. Would you agree, or would buying a matched set to test be worthwhile?

Regarding RichardWilson's post, the motherboard is brand new so I can't imagine there'd be any melted parts.


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## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

yep, ruuning two different speeds or makes can cause issue. Some motherboards preferr you to run in dual channel iu.e both ram sticks in same coloured slots. Some motherboards require you to set the dram speed as some default to 800MHz regardless of wether the ram is 1066 or higher.


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

Very strange development. I swapped PSU's between my two PC's. Same exact model PSU's. The PC has run for around 20 hours so far and survived several manual reboots without encountering any occurrences of the mystery reboot/sleep mode problem yet. This PC is running a 2.93 GHz Pentium Dual Core E6500 and the other PC is lower horsepowered with a Pentium 4.

Could the PSU's somehow actually be the solution, or is is more likely that this is just a temporary aberration? Makes no sense to me and I don't want to spend the many hours finishing it up until I know the problem is gone.


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

the one you swapped in probably has deteriorated as much as the the one that was in it


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

How could it deteriorate? Both PSU's were brand new just a few weeks ago.


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## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

I thought you had a coolmax psu, are you saying you put a corsair in the pc?


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

Sorry, yes. I went ahead and replaced the PSU's in both PC's a few weeks ago, just in case the Coolmax decided to wreak havoc like the other PSU did. The Coolmax went into the trash. So both PC's have the Corsair 550vx and yesterday's PSU swap was just swapping two identical PSU's between PC's. Maybe one is defective??


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## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

could be, have you got a multimeter to test them with at all?


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

Well, I do have one but don't have any idea how to use it.


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

what are the specs of each computer


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## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

how to use a multimeter http://www.techsupportforum.com/f210/test-your-power-supply-with-a-multi-meter-151526.html


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

*PC #1 (the one that started this whole mess)*
- Windows XP
- ASUS P5G41T-M motherboard
- 2.93 GHz Pentium dual-core E-6500 CPU
- 2GB RAM
- Corsair CMPSU-550VX PSU
- WD3200AAKS Caviar Blue 320GB hard drive

*PC #2 (stock Gateway model 5200S)*
- Windows XP
- Intel (Augsburg) 915G Motherboard
- 3.0 GHz Pentium 4 530 CPU
- 512MB RAM
- Corsair CMPSU-550VX PSU
- Western Digital 250-GB 7200-RPM 80GPP 7M SATA Hard Drive

Both PC's are using onboard audio and video, so no watt-suckers there.


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

Both PC's are XP Home, SP3 by the way.

Let me know if additional info would be helpful.


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

Well, I attempted the multimeter test as detailed in the sticky. Enough of it went as stated that I think I may have done it correctly. Not positive though, as my meter didn't have any obvious way to set it to 20Vdc.

Anyway, the only two things that really stood out were that:
- This PSU doesn't have any wire in the 18 pin slot where a white wire should be, hence that pin didn't read -5v. (the other same model PSU I have also has no white wire)
- The continuity test on the unplugged ATX connector (with AC power unplugged too) read zero for all pins although the test states that non-black wires should be non-zero.

The PC still hasn't self-rebooted or gone into the mystery sleep mode, and I'm still baffled.


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

an empty pi is normal as the wire is no longer used

there is another article here

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/guides/testingPSU/

check non of the capacitors are swollen or leaking

http://www.badcaps.net/pages.php?vid=5


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

Still no mystery reboots or sleep modes since the PSU swap. Weird.

Motherboard capacitors looked good as far as I could tell.

Results from the DriverHeaven PSU test were odd. I tested the PSUs from both PCs while running Prime95. Both returned numbers that were considerably higher than DriverHeaven says they should. 


........................PC #1........PC #2.....DriverHeaven Range
3.3v Rail.............3.94v.........3.87v..........3.17-3.43
5v Rail................5.96v.........5.90v...........4.8-5.2
12v Rail..............14.32v.......13.96v.......11.52-12.48

PC#1 = The one that was having all the problems.
PC#2 = My Gateway PC
Both PCs have a new Corsair VX550w PSU.

I'm assuming I did it correctly although I don't know much about how to use a multimeter. I have an old Universal Enterprises DM21 set to 20V mA KΩ and DCV.

Seems like those results should be consistently causing problems with both PC's regardless of which PSU is installed.


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

[Still no mystery reboots or sleep modes since the PSU swap.]

do you mean it is running normally now


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## blaronn (Oct 30, 2004)

Sorry, I wasn't very clear. I forget that my issue isn't the only one you work on.:grin:

The PC _seems_ to be working normally now although the only thing I've done since the problem last occurred is swapped PSUs between my two PCs back about a month ago. Same model PSU in both PCs. Doesn't make any sense that the PSU swap would've fixed the problem so I'm hesitant to start painful task of restoring everything to the PC without knowing for sure that it's fixed.


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

it sounds like one of the plugs may not have seated properly the first time and swapping the psu's over has fixed it


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