Geriatric PC?

[catgate]

I have a strange little problem that I may have touched upon previously. It is one of those very intermittent problems that are so hard to pin down. It is the sort of thing that "pops" is good at.

W98SE (with Unofficial SP) Recent new Asrock P4i65G MB. 512 RAM 60G HD

The symptoms, when they happen, are as follows. When I push the GO button the machine starts to wind itself up as normal, but in a matter of two or three seconds, just as I have turned away to do something else whilst it boots up, it stops, just as if the plug had been pulled. It has not even got to the POST bleeps. It will then have about three bars rest before once again firing itself up and continuing as though nothing had happened. This occurs maybe once every dozen times it is fired up. For most things I use this Linux machine and management sometimes uses her laptop, so the problem machine is only used occasionally for one or two Widows specific apps.

It used to do this on the old mother board, so I am not suspecting that part of the machine, and as far as the Go button is concerned it has obviously switched the power on once and thus, due to the fact that it the machine restarts itself, it does not appear to me as though the switch has "dropped out".

I am left thinking Power Pack but there is no nasty smell or smoke, and once it has got up a full head of steam it works away as happily as an MP at the trough.

Is it starting with Alzheimers?

What does the committee think?

[rong]

Try another PSU and see if it still happens, could be memory also. Swap around the PSU with your Linux machine.

[Scarecrow Man]

once it has got up a full head of steam it works away as happily as an MP at the trough.

:lol:

I agree with rong on this one and suggest another PSU. It could also be a bad or multiple bad capacitors on the system board. They may not provide enough "slop" for the unit to go through its initial startup.

[catgate]

It could also be a bad or multiple bad capacitors on the system board.

It was doing this before I fed it a new mother board and new RAM.

rongs PSU suggestion may warrant further investigation, but just what sort of scenario one could cook up to account for this behaviour is a bit of a mystery..