Interesting problem need thoughts please

[Titancom]

Hi All,

I have a relatives PC around my house with a funny problem that maybe you can give me your thoughts on what might cause this issue.

First when its at his house sometimes when he turns it on it will sit practically at pre post test and do nothing.

System is Asus M2N SLI Deluxe board, Nvidia 8600GT Video, 2Gb DDR2-800 ram, Card reader, floppy drive, 640Gb HDD,AMD x2 4200+, Antec 900 case and Thermaltake 620 watt PSU i think.

But when i bring it over to my place and fire it up it always works perfect?

Any thoughts on why it always works at my house but randomly after using it for maybe months it always seem to do the same thing and look like basically its freezing before it really starts post test.

Side note after sitting for a couple of days it looses its bios setting and yet its only 11 to almost 12 months old for the PC.

Excuse any typo i may do i am little tired after being up for a long time thanks in advance guys/girls.

 

[Barman58]

Hi Titancom,

You don't say if it's a laptop or desktop - But if its a desktop have you checked the RTC battery. Have seen some strange things over the years with batteries which are loose or almost failing.

Other thing could be a "brown out" ie Voltage sag on the supply which is occasional at the "home" location

just throwing out ideas but the loss of BIOS settings would suggest the first scenario and the general hang could be supply voltage dips

 

[bassfisher6522]

my first suggestion would be check the cmos battery. then make sure its on some sort of surge protection at least, even better a battery backup a ups. line voltages play hell on pcs.

 

[Titancom]

Thanks for your response guys, yeah the battery is proberly the only thing to do with loss of bios setting but doesn't explain why it hangs at the start of boot at his house but at mine it works fine

 

[kev duncan]

hi titancom,

you dont say if your unhooking the machine or laptop and moving it about?, ave just had same prob with my laptop and found the battery to be at fault but later on it did the same. a know its a pain but a restored my system and reinstalled windows from scratch! ever since my laptops worked fine.

 

[Titancom]

Hi Kev,

Sorry its a desktop, when it gets brought to me it always works fine here but if i take it back to his house it works fine for upto months then hits this issue of sitting at the very start of bios and goes no further.

 

[bassfisher6522]

Make sure the desktop is on a surge protector at your buddies house. Then get a multimeter and test the voltage at the AC outlet to make sure it is constant. Line voltage sags and spikes will make a PC do strange things. Just curious, whats the distance between you and your buddies house?

 

[jgrobertson]

As an electrical engineer, I would say it is most surely to do with a combination of bad noisy electrical power and a poorly designed power supply. First would be a UPS on the power and run the computer on that (I suggest APC). The other might be to put in a new (and better quality) power supply in the computer. Another thing to consider is the load on the power supply. If a lot of things have been added (extra hard drives, new high performance video card etc.) then you may on the margin of what the power supply can deliver. Then with marginal power line conditions, it tucks under on you.

 

[Titancom]

Thanks jgrobertson for you imput, i wondered about the power sockets myself. The power supply is a thermaltake 620 watt which is more then ample for what its needs running a AMD 4200+ x2, ASAU m2n-sli deluxe board, 1 HDD, 1 DVDRW, 1 floppy, 1 card reader, 1 ATI radeon 4850 video card, DDR2-800 2Gb ram and a antec 900 case that has standard 3 LED fans. anything else is onboard USB/sound etc etc

Bassfisher my friend lives about 30+ mins away from me further out in the country type area (approx 40+ Km's)and i live in the city outer suburbs.

I did some checks on RAM as a i always do its fine but did find a trojen on his PC that may have stuffed around his OS but that doesn't explain it feezing at the start of post bios test.

Another theory i have is maybe a micro fracture in the mainboard itself that breaks internal rail contact and messes with it at post bios level and that by taking it for a drive it seems to for a while anyway fix itself and work flawlessly for months before reverting back to the same issue? what you think?

 

[jgrobertson]

Hmmm, I still hang onto the idea that the power quality is different between the two places. As far as a crack in the board that somehow manifests itself at one place and not the other goes. Temperature and humidity can cause these kind of things to become an issue.

It there anything different between the environments other than power? Temperature and humidity come to mind first.

 

[Titancom]

Hmmm, I still hang onto the idea that the power quality is different between the two places. As far as a crack in the board that somehow manifests itself at one place and not the other goes. Temperature and humidity can cause these kind of things to become an issue.

It there anything different between the environments other than power? Temperature and humidity come to mind first.

Yeah i tend to believe more that its proberly a power thing, enviroment is pretty much the same here as to where he lives.

I have told him he needs to get a good UPS and i will reinstall his OS and then see how that goes.

Power quility could be different but i am not really sure as i believe the south east queensland power grid is proberly not the greatest for brown outs and spikes, i myself run through 3 good surge protectors for all PC's at my house.

When i get a sag in power 2 systems stay at the desktop with no dramas but only my wifes seems to be a little tempremetal to it and reboots.