Appreciate help before the crash of the day?( Long)

[NotanITperson]

I am new here and not a tech person so I hope it is okay to post here. I'm not sure everything is related but thought the details might help figure out what might be wrong.

I own a HP a420n running Windows XP. I have had it for a few years without problems. A few weeks ago the monitor would shut off intermittently. I thought these were strange flukes and I could get it to come back on by shutting down my computer by holding in the power button on the cpu tower, then restarting the whole system. (I first kept trying to hit the power button on the monitor and if I recall at the beginning of this it sometimes worked.)

I usually leave my computer on and one day my husband called me at work to ask why my computer screen was all green. I didn't know and told him to shut down the system. When I got home I had no trouble and again tried to not worry about it. However, the shut downs became more frequent and hitting the power button on the monitor no longer worked at all.

So I figured my monitor had died and went out and bought a new one. A lovely HP w2007. I was assured I didn't need anything else and went home to hook it up. I couldn't get the resolution as high as it would go. (Also, since the system had been running quite slowly even before these issues I figured I needed more memory.)

I purchased and had my daughter's fiance install the video card and memory. (He is more computer savvy.) The new video card is a ATI Radeon HD2400 Pro and the memory is Kingston 512MB DDR PC2700 333MHz.

Also, we switched from VGA to DVI.

For a couple of days everything seemed to work great. THEN, bam...same type of problems all over again!

So now I am starting to think the problem was never with the monitor. (Which in a way is okay because I love my new flat screen compared to the old one.) BUT...not being able to use my system whenever I want is starting to be a pain. I can usually get it to come up only one or two times in a day after it dies. When this first happened after installing the new monitor I called HP support and was on the phone with them for hours. At one point he had me unplug all the cords and that made the system start right up. I asked him to hold on so that I could shut down the system and try to restart. Guess, what....NO restart.

So we kept trying the same things over and over again. Usually the monitor would show a message saying "No Input signal..." go black and then briefly show the message "monitor going to sleep." then go black. I always know when the system won't come on because the HD drive indicator light stays yellow when I start up the system instead of flashing.

Do I need to buy a new computer?

[NotanITperson]

(Probably won't help with this issue but I did post a HiJack this log in the Virus forum.)

[bobbyraw]

I am new here and not a tech person so I hope it is okay to post here. I'm not sure everything is related but thought the details might help figure out what might be wrong.

I own a HP a420n running Windows XP. I have had it for a few years without problems. A few weeks ago the monitor would shut off intermittently. I thought these were strange flukes and I could get it to come back on by shutting down my computer by holding in the power button on the cpu tower, then restarting the whole system. (I first kept trying to hit the power button on the monitor and if I recall at the beginning of this it sometimes worked.)

I usually leave my computer on and one day my husband called me at work to ask why my computer screen was all green. I didn't know and told him to shut down the system. When I got home I had no trouble and again tried to not worry about it. However, the shut downs became more frequent and hitting the power button on the monitor no longer worked at all.

So I figured my monitor had died and went out and bought a new one. A lovely HP w2007. I was assured I didn't need anything else and went home to hook it up. I couldn't get the resolution as high as it would go. (Also, since the system had been running quite slowly even before these issues I figured I needed more memory.)

I purchased and had my daughter's fiance install the video card and memory. (He is more computer savvy.) The new video card is a ATI Radeon HD2400 Pro and the memory is Kingston 512MB DDR PC2700 333MHz.

Also, we switched from VGA to DVI.

For a couple of days everything seemed to work great. THEN, bam...same type of problems all over again!

So now I am starting to think the problem was never with the monitor. (Which in a way is okay because I love my new flat screen compared to the old one.) BUT...not being able to use my system whenever I want is starting to be a pain. I can usually get it to come up only one or two times in a day after it dies. When this first happened after installing the new monitor I called HP support and was on the phone with them for hours. At one point he had me unplug all the cords and that made the system start right up. I asked him to hold on so that I could shut down the system and try to restart. Guess, what....NO restart.

So we kept trying the same things over and over again. Usually the monitor would show a message saying "No Input signal..." go black and then briefly show the message "monitor going to sleep." then go black. I always know when the system won't come on because the HD drive indicator light stays yellow when I start up the system instead of flashing.

Do I need to buy a new computer?

Sound like youa re having a Mother board,power or heating issue. and to add to it you installed a video card that will require more power. when you monitor looses signal from the pc and the pc is showing that it still has power (especially an orange light this is pointing to the Moboard. could very well be the power supply too. but to rule out one at a time we will do this. open the PC and check the fans on the case, Power supply and CPU. are they turning. do you smell anything like burnt electrical in the PSU, try another PSU if you have one.

[ScudRunner50]

I've had similar problems in the past. Once it was the mobo (which was 10 years old) and the other time it was the power supply (user upgraded video card and added another optical drive, but did not buy a bigger PSU)

If your daughter's fiance is comfortable with doing it, you may want to have him swap out your current PSU for a larger one, probably 400 Watts or more. Make sure that the new PSU has all the connections you need. Ideally you'll want to use another PSU to test this before you go out and buy one, but if you're ok with the cost, it doesnt hurt to have a new PSU.

If this does not solve it, your problem is most likely the motherboard. Since I dont know the technical level of your soon-to-be son-in-law I would suggest taking it to a technician at this point, if this is the case.

Best of luck and let us know how it goes!

[NotanITperson]

Thank you for the responses. I will check into this PSU situation and get back to you.