Power problems

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mark C
  • Start date Start date
M

Mark C

Greetings. I'm running a Biostar M7MIA mainboard with an AMD 1600
CPU, 300W power supply. No overclocking. I leave it running all the
time. When we get a power outage, or sometimes when I just shut it
down, it won't come back up right away. I have to take the side panel
off. When I hit the power button, it may get a little burst of power
for a microsecond, the fans spin for a brief moment, a little red
light on the board comes on, then goes off. If I unplug the power at
the case, mess with the toggle switch that's back there, it eventually
comes back up. Sometimes the little red light will come back on and
stay on, but I still can't get the power all the way back up. After a
short bit of unplugging and re-plugging a hard drive, or the connector
from the chip fan to the board, or the power at the case, it
eventually comes back up. I can't seem to pin the problem down to any
one cause.
Any thoughts on this or how to diagnose? Thanks for any replies.
--Mark
 
It could very well be a PS problem in that there may be a leaking capacitor
that won't hold a charge while cold. As you keep turning it on the PS warms
holding the charge longer and longer.
Sounds silly?
I recently built a box that initially ran fine for a couple of weeks.
The school secretary, for whom I built it, started complaining that the
computer would reboot in the morning even before it got into the OS. After a
couple of times of rebooting it would finally get into the OS and then
reboot ten minutes later and then the next time 20 minutes later and then
run OK for the rest of the day.
Replacing the PS solved the problem. I put the faulty PS in another
machine and the exact problem started happening as happened with the
secretary's machine.
By the way, I sent the PS back to Enlight and just got the replacement
yesterday. Those RMA shipping costs take all the fun out of getting a good
deal on a cheap case.
 
I had a problem similar to this, whenever I shut down I couldn't get
booted back up, it'd flash really quick and shut back down and what
not. I had many people tell me it was the memory or the CPU.... This
is mostly wrong, it is most likely the motherboard, or the
powersupply. When I had this problem, it was the motherboard,
something with the power switch or power connector with the
motherboard was bad, it was still under warrentee and I sent it back
and got a new one and I haven't had the problem since and its been
about 8 months. The best way to check would of course be to swap out
the motherboard with a compatible one and see if it boots, or you
could swap out the powersupply for a new one and see if it boots,
either way, you're going to have to swap parts to find where the
fault is I'd imagine.

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