Doomed, presumably (PC hardware glitch)

[malthaussen]

My very ancient box has started glitching on startup. Twice, now, in about five starts, it has not booted correctly the first time: the disk spins, but the BIOS does not start and the monitor times out for lack of input. I have to toggle the power and switch it on again, which is not something I'm happy about doing while the disk light is on. So far it has booted correctly after the power has toggled, or I wouldn't be writing this.

Since a new box, or even Windoze 10 is not an option financially right now, the question is whether I should leave it on 24/7 or just continue to toggle the power when/if it happens again.

Housekeeping details: It's a dual-core AMD running under Windows XP SP3 Home (I said it was ancient). 2 gigs on the motherboard, the BIOS is American Megatrends. I use Firefox, incidentally, but that is up to date.

-- Mal

[hollysmom]

1. how old is yours?

I have plenty of well used computers I was going to dump next week after looking for people who might want them and not finding them. I have to check, but the newest may be 5 or 6 years old.

[malthaussen]

3. About the same

Vintage 2010.

-- Mal

[hollysmom]

5. never mind.

[steve2470]

2. for now, I'd leave it on 24/7

Your motherboard might be going bad. Just a guess. I'm sure our more expert members can pinpoint the problem. If it is a motherboard, you could probably get one pretty cheap, plus either free installation by a friend or a charge by a shop.

See here: BIOSTAR TA970 AM3+ AMD 970 + SB950 6 x SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS , $50 plus shipping. Just a thought for the future.

[PoliticAverse]

4. When it doesn't boot nothing shows on the monitor?

Do you hear any beeps from the (internal) speaker when it doesn't boot?

[malthaussen]

7. Nope, nothing at all

The monitor starts up, waits a little, then says "no signal" and turns off. No audible alerts.

-- Mal

[PoliticAverse]

8. Is the video driver integrated into the motherboard or a plug in card?

If the video is from a video card plugged into the motherboard reseating the card (when power is
disconnected) might help. If you open the case you might also want to vacuum the inside at that time.

[malthaussen]

9. Yes, it is a GForce 9400 GT

I suppose it could be dying itself, and nothing else.

-- Mal

[PoliticAverse]

10. Does it have a fan on it and if so it is working?

With power off I'd remove and reseat the card, this often fixes video problems.

[malthaussen]

11. So you think this is probably a video problem?

That's probably better than the alternatives, anyway. I don't think the 9400 has a fan, it's only a half a gig card. In any event, it has no fan diagnostics accessible from the system.

I have another odd problem which may be related. I've only bought a couple of really new programs in the past year or so, both very low on resource-usage because of my small amount of RAM (and XP, of course). Both of them are said to run under XP with less than two gigs RAM, but both run fine for a few minutes and then suddenly shut off the computer. Very strange, and it, too requires the power to be toggled to restart. Fortunately, there is no disk activity when they shut down. Needless to say, the respective discussion boards have no clue why this is happening. May not even be related, and none of my older software displays this behavior.

-- Mal

[PoliticAverse]

12. I wouldn't say it's "probably" a video problem but since it could be the video card

reseating the card sometimes does fix problems like this. At this point I'd
load memtest86+ on a USB drive or (or CD-Rom) and let it run for a few
hours when you aren't using the computer and see if it finds any issues.
http://www.memtest.org/#downiso

[malthaussen]

14. Well, the BIOS says the RAM is okay.

I'll have to pick up a USB drive first to run memtest.

-- Mal

[PoliticAverse]

15. Do you have a CD-Rom writer in the computer? n/t

[malthaussen]

17. Yeah, but no blank CD-ROMS.

I've never used the thing.

-- Mal

[PoliticAverse]

18. Ok. USB flash drives are pretty cheap now and you can use their storage to backup

the stuff you have on this computer just in case it is dying.

[SwankyXomb]

6. Hopefully it's something simple

like the power supply or even a CMOS battery. A lot of local computer shop will offer free diagnostics, so that might be an option.

[gvstn]

21. This is where I would go.

Change the CMOS battery. Dollar stores have them for a dollar.

That is the first thing I would do when BIOS doesn't work correctly. A bad battery can cause lots of unexpected problems and is a simple fix.

[hobbit709]

13. Open the box and blow out all the dust bunnies for starters.

Do you get any beeps at all?
Even though the monitor doesn't light do the lights on the keyboard and optical drive blink at all?
If you can disconnect the drives and then turn it on to see if it POSTs, that's a start.
Could be a bad motherboard or power supply-that's the most likely causes. you hardly ever see an AMD cpu blow.

While it's up and running back up all your data to an external drive.

Where do you live? I've got computers stacked up to my ears in my garage.

[malthaussen]

16. I live outside of Philly.

I didn't notice if the lights were blinking, and I get no beeps at all. I'll have to watch for the lights if I turn the box off, of course it always displays lights when it works. And alas, I know exactly one flesh-and-blood human at this point (as opposed to Internet acquaintences, who are legion), and she knows zero about computers. I kind of grit my teeth these days when people suggest getting a "friend" to help, since the last friend I had who knew anything about hardware moved away some time ago. I'm more of a sofware guy myself.

-- Mal

[steve2470]

19. btw sorry I mentioned the friend thing

Only trying to help!

[malthaussen]

20. Oh, that wasn't meant to be critical of you.

It's a perfectly reasonable thought. It just doesn't apply in my case.

-- Mal