System abruptly powers down

I have a system built around an m2n-sli deluxe with an athlon 64x2 (I
don't recall the exact model) that's been working fine for a couple of
years until today.

This morning my wife told me the computer kept shutting down on her.
I tried it myself and when I turned it on, it POSTed normally, and
booted XP and drew the desktop. But before all the background
programs got started (i.e., before all the icons appeared in the tray)
the cursor froze, though the hard-drive access light continued to
flicker. Then after about 10-15 seconds of this, the system shut
down. The shutdown was an abrupt loss of power -- no message, no
warning, no Windows shutdown -- the power just went off.

I didn't have time to pursue it (had to get to work) but I'm thinking
this sounds like an overheat problem that caused the system to turn
itself off before it melted down. Possibly a fan failure? I could
hear the fans running before it died, but there are several of them in
the box and I might not have noticed if one was out.

So I'll take a look later and I'm hoping to find a dead fan and the
problem will be no worse than having to replace it. But if that turns
out not to be the case, is there another likely culprit? Something
else to look for?

Reply-to address is real
John

On Tue, 19 May 2009 07:22:07 -0400, John
wrote:


I have a system built around an m2n-sli deluxe with an athlon 64x2 (I
don't recall the exact model) that's been working fine for a couple of
years until today.

This morning my wife told me the computer kept shutting down on her.
I tried it myself and when I turned it on, it POSTed normally, and
booted XP and drew the desktop. But before all the background
programs got started (i.e., before all the icons appeared in the tray)
the cursor froze, though the hard-drive access light continued to
flicker. Then after about 10-15 seconds of this, the system shut
down. The shutdown was an abrupt loss of power -- no message, no
warning, no Windows shutdown -- the power just went off.

I didn't have time to pursue it (had to get to work) but I'm thinking
this sounds like an overheat problem that caused the system to turn
itself off before it melted down. Possibly a fan failure? I could
hear the fans running before it died, but there are several of them in
the box and I might not have noticed if one was out.

So I'll take a look later and I'm hoping to find a dead fan and the
problem will be no worse than having to replace it. But if that turns
out not to be the case, is there another likely culprit? Something
else to look for?

Reply-to address is real
John


1. The dreaded motherboard capacitor plague - Google it to see some
examples.

2. Dead/Blocked CPU fan.

3. Power Supply - again due to the capacitor plague.

Good luck,
Norton

"John" wrote in message
...

I have a system built around an m2n-sli deluxe with an athlon 64x2 (I
don't recall the exact model) that's been working fine for a couple of
years until today.

This morning my wife told me the computer kept shutting down on her.
I tried it myself and when I turned it on, it POSTed normally, and
booted XP and drew the desktop. But before all the background
programs got started (i.e., before all the icons appeared in the tray)
the cursor froze, though the hard-drive access light continued to
flicker. Then after about 10-15 seconds of this, the system shut
down. The shutdown was an abrupt loss of power -- no message, no
warning, no Windows shutdown -- the power just went off.

I didn't have time to pursue it (had to get to work) but I'm thinking
this sounds like an overheat problem that caused the system to turn
itself off before it melted down. Possibly a fan failure? I could
hear the fans running before it died, but there are several of them in
the box and I might not have noticed if one was out.

So I'll take a look later and I'm hoping to find a dead fan and the
problem will be no worse than having to replace it. But if that turns
out not to be the case, is there another likely culprit? Something
else to look for?

Reply-to address is real
John

If you press Delete every second after power on it should get you into
the
bios.
There should be a menu to allow you to look at some of the temperatures
(System, CPU).
Also if it doesn't power down after a few minutes, it tends to imply
something wrong with your XP.

Eric

--
Remove the dross to contact me directly

John wrote:
I have a system built around an m2n-sli deluxe with an athlon 64x2 (I
don't recall the exact model) that's been working fine for a couple of
years until today.

This morning my wife told me the computer kept shutting down on her.
I tried it myself and when I turned it on, it POSTed normally, and
booted XP and drew the desktop. But before all the background
programs got started (i.e., before all the icons appeared in the tray)
the cursor froze, though the hard-drive access light continued to
flicker. Then after about 10-15 seconds of this, the system shut
down. The shutdown was an abrupt loss of power -- no message, no
warning, no Windows shutdown -- the power just went off.

I didn't have time to pursue it (had to get to work) but I'm thinking
this sounds like an overheat problem that caused the system to turn
itself off before it melted down. Possibly a fan failure? I could
hear the fans running before it died, but there are several of them in
the box and I might not have noticed if one was out.

So I'll take a look later and I'm hoping to find a dead fan and the
problem will be no worse than having to replace it. But if that turns
out not to be the case, is there another likely culprit? Something
else to look for?

Reply-to address is real
John

The cursor freeze could be a video card problem (graphics subsystem
crapping out). And yet it shut down, and that could be a CPU overheating.
I'd check both the video card fan and CPU fan.

The CPU has THERMTRIP, which is sent to the logic controlling PS_ON#,
and that is how an overheat, causes the computer to go off without
warning.

Paul

On Tue, 19 May 2009 07:22:07 -0400, John wrote:


I have a system built around an m2n-sli deluxe with an athlon 64x2 (I
don't recall the exact model) that's been working fine for a couple of
years until today.

This morning my wife told me the computer kept shutting down on her.
I tried it myself and when I turned it on, it POSTed normally, and
booted XP and drew the desktop. But before all the background
programs got started (i.e., before all the icons appeared in the tray)
the cursor froze, though the hard-drive access light continued to
flicker. Then after about 10-15 seconds of this, the system shut
down. The shutdown was an abrupt loss of power -- no message, no
warning, no Windows shutdown -- the power just went off.

I didn't have time to pursue it (had to get to work) but I'm thinking
this sounds like an overheat problem that caused the system to turn
itself off before it melted down. Possibly a fan failure? I could
hear the fans running before it died, but there are several of them in
the box and I might not have noticed if one was out.

So I'll take a look later and I'm hoping to find a dead fan and the
problem will be no worse than having to replace it. But if that turns
out not to be the case, is there another likely culprit? Something
else to look for?

Try with another PSU.