Mitchell, As I suggested previously, just place another working box beside the flakey one and use the power supply from the good one to power the bad one. Most PSU cables will reach and it's a quick way to test without pulling the PSU's. Pulling them takes about 5 minutes if the cables don't reach.
There are PSU testers out there but many do not actually place a load on the supply, simply check for the presence of power on the line. I usually just hang a new PS off the box and test before I pull the suspect one. FYI, all the systems I sell come with a minimum 400W power supply. While they are a bit more expensive initially they are certainly more reliable in the long run. I've had customer systems with a multitude of strange problems ranging from spontaneous reboots, reboot on mouse click to random failure to write to CD that were resolved with a new PS. HTH Cheers, Dave Watkins President Calgary Linux Users Group W: www.clug.ca E: [EMAIL PROTECTED] V: 403.701.5746 -----Original Message----- From: Mitchell Brown [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 09, 2006 12:01 PM To: CLUG General Subject: Re: [clug-talk] Random computer crashing Yup I'm suspecting power problems too now. I've been running a CPU stress test for hours now, and the memory test went all night, no problems. I might try another PSU. It's an AMD Athlon XP 2600+ I think. It cost about $2000 if I recall correctly. It has an ATI All in Wonder ($400) vid card. Hmm... Can you test a powersupply? Or just replace it? On 5/9/06, Hendrik Schaink <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote: Ripping video is a high-CPU-demand task. Considering that you haven't found any faulty memory nor hard drive, there's IMHO only two options left: either the CPU overheats and goes into power-down mode (Intel CPUs only; AMD CPUs in the past tended to burn themselves up) _OR_ the power to the CPU is insufficient on a "long-term" power-hungry task. Either of these scenario could create weird (dying) sounds over the speakers. You are saying that your box was bought as a high-end box -- does that mean that the PowerSupply is rated at least 350W? IMO a PSU of 300W with a high-end CPU _and_ a high-end video card _and_ a high-end sound card is a recipe for failure. If my memory serves me well, it was about 2 years ago that my own supplier started bringing in cases with 350W PSUs to provide adequate power to power-hungry components. Be really careful with _generic_ PSUs: they are produced with a low price-point in mind; reliable power and life span are sacrificed to achieve that price point. Be sure to check the cooling fins of the CPU fan -- they do tend to get clogged up with dust -- blow them out with forced air. All in all, my money is on the lack of power -- use it for what it's worth to you. Hendrik Schaink Mitchell Brown wrote: > It has one hard drive, a CDRW/DVD-ROM drive, and a DVD-RW drive. > And one or two fans. Total. That's it. No extra peripherals. > > On 5/9/06, *Mark Carlson* <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote: > > On 5/9/06, Kin Wong < [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> > wrote: > > Mitchell Brown wrote: > > > > > Okay, the full 5-stage CHKDSK just finished. Found 0 problems. Argh. > > > I could try reformatting the drive and doing a NTFS Full this > time - > > > but I'd probably just be wasting my time. > > > If it is faulty memory or a PSU, why would reformatting the > partition > > > with Linux make a difference to the Windows installer O_o > > > > > > I'm at a loss here. This is very frustrating for me and my mom wants > > > this video ripped asap. > > > > > > What would you guys do in my situation? -- Hendrik M. Schaink Chief Consultant "Integrated Business Solutions & Dependable Service" InfoVision Consulting Calgary, Alberta, Canada Phone: (403) 239-0099 "The Vision: We are the partners of choice for companies and organizations that share our commitment to creating a world that is truly wise, courageous, prosperous, innovative, inclusive, sustainable and humane." --Ruben Nelson GPG Fingerprint: 1371 0927 8C3C 831F A838 C312 68BC F5DB 010D F3D7 _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [email protected] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca Mailing List Guidelines ( http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) **Please remove these lines when replying -- pub 1024D/9091C422 02/05/2006 Mitchell Brown < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> Primary key fingerprint: 812B 94BC EA0D 345A CC1C 2ED9 F7F6 5CCF 9091 C422
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