Need Help In Diagnosing a Problem

[Zodan]

Hey everyone, I don't know if this is the right place to post this, but I need some help with figuring out what problem my computer is having.

I currently have an eMachines computer:
Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition
AMD Athlon™ XP 2400+ Processor (2.000 GHz) with QuantiSpeed™ architecture
VIA KM 266
7.25"w x 14.125"h x 16"d
60 GB HDD
256 MB DDR (PC 2100)
48x16x40x Max. CD-RW Drive; 16x Max. DVD Drive; 3.5" 1.44MB FDD
AC '97 Audio
S3 ProSavage8™ integrated (1 AGP slot available for upgrade)
6 USB 2.0 ports (2 on front), 1 Serial, 1 Parallel, 2 PS/2, Microphone-In & Head Phone jack on front, Audio-In & Out, 3 PCI slots (2 available)

I have dropped in another 256MB of RAM, and have recently put in a nVidia 5200 128MB video card.

Recently the computer has been turning off without warning. When I try to turn it on it usually has problems. It usually makes sounds like normal when it boots up, but the light around the power button will not come on, and I get no picture on the monitor. Sometimes the light will come on, but I get no picture on the monitor. It is working now, but before it did, it had been sitting overnight and came back on properly once I unplugged the power cords and plugged the CPU power and monitor cord in different sockets on my surge protector box. Then it came on, and I am now posting this message.

Could someone give me some advice? I can give further details.

 

[Shrapnill]

Sounds to me like a power issue.

 

[SkittDizzle]

Most likely a power supply/over heating issue.

 

[Zodan]

So what do I do now?

 

[Shrapnill]

well... to test the theory, remove the added hardware and see if itll boot.

If you need a bigger power supply... you buy one.

 

[Zodan]

I had tried that, I had taken the video card off and plugged the monitor cord into its old socket and the computer still wasn't booting up right. So I put the card back in and stuff, and pluged the cord into different sockets and it works, and has been working all morning.





That's a funny face --------> :beard:

 

[wansingct]

could be a motherboard going out. the fact that it's an emachine doesn't help much. does it give an errors??

 

[Zodan]

Oh crap, don't tell me that, lol. Are eMachines not good? How would I know if it was the motherboard? It did give one error one time when I turned it on, but I didn't have time to read it all. It was like the DOS looking stuff, the white text over black. It mentioned some stuff, and asked how I wanted to boot up?

 

[wansingct]

if given the opportunity, try either last known good (try this first) or safe mode. truthfully, i used to work at circuit city back in the day here in the cheap a$$ed south and used to have people coming in wanting the e-machine. Since CC wasn't my main source of income (I was in the USMC at the time) I had no problems telling them that I would rather not sell them an emachine. I've known people to have them for years and never have a problem though too.......go figure. truthfully, I saw many fewer hp's and even compaq's come back to the store, but it seemed if they lasted for over 6 mos they would be good for a good while. In my experience, techies and heavy game players put too much stress on an emachine for it to handle the stress very long before going down though.

Anyways, see if you can get into the computer with safe mode or last known good and let me know.

 

[joeline]

I agree 100% hoorah with wansingct. You want to run all of these processor and memeory intensive games on these cheap ass machines, your going to wear them out in a hurry. E machines are not bad PC's for basic end-user usage.