Booting Issue, any ideas anybody?

[williamsc47]

Hi all,

Ok, somebody may have an answer to this, but personally I cannot figure it out.

I turn the PC on and it seems to try to boot up but doest really seem to get there, the harddrive LED stays lit for a minute or so and then goes off, all the while the monitor is never activated...but not here comes the odd part, if I leave it for a few hours it seems to boot fine I can load up windows and all is well for as long as the PC is on, but then if I try to restart I have the same problem again.

So far I have been able to boot up the PC after a few hours wait, twice, but am unsure how long I will be able to do this for...but it just seems to odd to me, almost as if my PC thinks its time for retirement...lol...probably is in all truth

Anyway, here are the specs:

OS: Windows 2000 Pro
CPU: AMD Athlon 1Ghz
Memory: 512mb SDRAM
HDD: 60GB

Any ideas anyone?

Cheers, Craig

[jbennet]

this used to happen on a win95 olivetti pc i used to have. the monitor never came on and the LED stayed lit- it would boot every once in a while ok and have no problems but othertimes it would do this

It turned out to be a dodgy PSU

[williamsc47]

Thanks for your reply......hmmm, guess it could be an odd isue with the PSU, although it does seem unlikely, however I think most most ideas for this would seem unlikely on the surface, might be worth looking into then, anymore ideas anybody?

Any help/ideas/advice is very much appreciated :)

[jbennet]

bad ram?

there is a program (usually bundled with linux cds) called memtest86 that will check your ram

[williamsc47]

bad ram?

there is a program (usually bundled with linux cds) called memtest86 that will check your ram

You never know, worth checking the next time I can get it to turn on...lol

Thanks for the suggestion...anybody else?

[caperjack]

I have a Athlon 1000 here with simular problems ,and it was bad capacitors on the motherboard , i replaced board and now it workes fine .
also you don't need windows to boot to test ram with memtest it runs from dos ,copy to a floppyand start computer and it will run the test .if you do this let it run for a few hrs .
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/memtest86.html

[williamsc47]

I have a Athlon 1000 here with simular problems ,and it was bad capacitors on the motherboard , i replaced board and now it workes fine .
also you don't need windows to boot to test ram with memtest it runs from dos ,copy to a floppyand start computer and it will run the test .if you do this let it run for a few hrs .
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/memtest86.html

Yeah, im thinking you may well be right, because I have now tried replacing the PSU and it has made no difference at all...I have still yet to try to memory test, but I have to get the thing to turn on again first...seems to be worse at the moment, wont turn on at all :(