[vinny_the_hack]

After a short power failure, today, my XP/SP2 system failed to boot with the message "Operating system not found." I powered it off and on again and it booted successfully. Since then (about 8 hours ago), it has twice momentarily lost power (the PC, not my home) and of course, I lost what I was doing. It rebooted by itself without incident. This would be a very inconvenient thing to live with. Any ideas on what's wrong and or what I can do to isolate the cause and or resolve the problem? I plan to do a disk check later when I'm through for the night. I'm thinking some bad spot on my disk or possibly my RAM when accessed/written to causes a catastrophic failure. Or maybe my power supply? I'm just grasping at straws. I'd really like to find the specific cause. Thanks.

Edited by vinny_the_hack, 27 December 2006 - 10:52 PM.

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The first place to look for any problems is the event viewer that is in administrative tools. (control panel>perf & maint> admin tools). The second place i look for problems is the power supply. If it is damaged by a electrical spike it could be overheating and a special circuit, in the PS, shuts off the computer before any damage to components can be done. If you can find any problems there it may be most any part of the computer but is most likely the motherboard. Generally it is not a HD problem since unless it is accessing an area for booting it does not usually keep accessing the same area on the disk for reading and writing. Its possible it could be ram . Use the memtest program to verify your ram is good. Read its directions carefully before using.

http://www.memtest86.com/

Let us know if none of this seems to help.

SRX660

[SRX660]

The first place to look for any problems is the event viewer that is in administrative tools. (control panel>perf & maint> admin tools). The second place i look for problems is the power supply. If it is damaged by a electrical spike it could be overheating and a special circuit, in the PS, shuts off the computer before any damage to components can be done. If you can find any problems there it may be most any part of the computer but is most likely the motherboard. Generally it is not a HD problem since unless it is accessing an area for booting it does not usually keep accessing the same area on the disk for reading and writing. Its possible it could be ram . Use the memtest program to verify your ram is good. Read its directions carefully before using.

http://www.memtest86.com/

Let us know if none of this seems to help.

SRX660

[vinny_the_hack]

Overnight, I ran a disk check and it found some errors and corrected them.

It has only failed one more time in the last 24 hours or so (a few minutes ago).

I looked in the event viewer and there's nothing.

How do I test/eliminate the power supply as a possible problem?

I read you can monitor heat levels. Is this worth doing?

I downloaded memtest86 and put it on a CD. It doesn't seem to boot. I just moved it to the CD like any other. Is this correct? Is there nothing I need to do differently to make the CD bootable?

Thanks for your continued help.

[SRX660]

Probably the best way to monitor yout temps in the computer is to download speedfan and run it . It will not only give you any temps that the motherboard monitors but it will also tell you wht your voltages coming from the power supply are so you will know if the voltages are too low. It really does not take much for low voltages to affect a computer. I personally do not like my 12 volt line to be below 11.9 volts. I prefer it to be at 12.1 or higher all the time. The more hardware you are runing in a computer the more voltage it uses to where it could go low enough to cause problems.

A Athlon 2400 puter i had was restarting and at times just shutting off because the 12 volt line showed only 11.39 volts all the time. This was a cheap power supply problem and when it was replaced by a thermotake 430 watt PS the 12 volt line stayed ar 12.13 volts all the time then and the computer quit crashing.

Heres speedfan.
http://www.majorgeek...ownload337.html



If memtest did not start up then it was burned to the cd wrong.

http://www.petri.co....files_to_cd.htm

SRX660

Edited by SRX660, 28 December 2006 - 09:17 PM.

[vinny_the_hack]

Speedfan gives me no useful information at all. It detects my hardrive and 2 fans. It shows 0 rpm for both fans and no temps at all. I even downloaded a config and there was no change.

I'll see if I can figure out what's wrong with memtest...

Edited by vinny_the_hack, 29 December 2006 - 10:15 AM.

[vinny_the_hack]

Sorry, I lied. It does give me the temp of my HDD as 42C. It occasionally goes to 45C and then back to 42C.

[vinny_the_hack]

It passed the memory test without error. <scratching head>

[ultimateslacker2]

Mind if you post a screen shot for us?

If you do not know how, do this

open up the program with no other windows open.
press the following keys:

ALT + PrintScrn (it might say sysRQ below it)
Hold the alt key than press the printscrn button
open up paint and click i think edit than press paste. it should show your temps.

use somethign like photobucket to upload the file and post the link on to here so i can analyze your temperatures.

[AnthonyJ]

my desktop used to do that, it was overheating. pop the side of your case off and look at your heatsink, mine had a layer of dirt. almost no are made it through

[vinny_the_hack]

Last night, it was losing power repeatedly. It couldn't even make it through the boot sequence. Today, I went out and bought a new power supply. Problem appears to be solved. It's booted up and I've been on for about an hour. My old PSU was 150 watts. The new one is 350 watts.

Thank-you all for your time, concern and effort.

Edited by vinny_the_hack, 30 December 2006 - 06:31 PM.

[ultimateslacker2]

Whew 150watts? thats is like for a 486 machine LOL

Glad you solved it!