Well this was strange. My main system I use kept
\nperiodically shutting down for no apparent reason. I checked for the usual
\nvirus, what was running on the system at time of shutdown etc… <\/p>\n
There was no pattern to the
\nshutdowns. I had the latest virus protection and had upgraded my Windows XP Pro
\nto the latest levels of updates. I looked in the event logs and saw some
\nreferences to the video driver so I downloaded and started to update the video
\ndriver. During the video driver update the system cut-off again!<\/p>\n
Well this time it would not boot
\nall the way back up but kept cutting off before the system could complete the
\nbios load. After a while it did not boot at all!! The system stopped even
\npowering up!<\/p>\n
I then went and got a spare power
\nsupply I had not used in a while and that also failed to power the system up.
\nThis is when I started smelling the aroma of burnt silicon. My next step was to
\npromptly unplug my system and power supply. I tried a few more items but since
\nit was late (3am) I went to bed. <\/p>\n
Now this is what really threw me
\ndown the wrong path is that when I woke up and came into my computer room My
\nhubs, routers and system in my 19\u201d rack where down. My UPS I had bought at a
\ncomputer swap would not come back up! I unplugged everything and went to the old
\nstandby surge protectors. My systems and hubs came back up.<\/p>\n
Since I have had issues with power
\nthe past few months and had moved things around and considerably reconfigured
\nthe power structure in the room I figured this was a contributing factor to my
\nsystem failure.<\/p>\n
That day at lunch I purchased
\nanother 550w ATX power supply. Tracking down my power supply manufacture of the
\npower supply I thought had failed produced another side story. The company\u2019s web
\nsite listed on the side of the box was not active and they had no address or
\nother information about the company on or in the box! I had to go to the store
\nand convince the place I had bought the power supply from seven months ago to
\ncall their buyers of the power supply and get the number to the company I had
\nbought the power supply from! Even the current boxes on the stores shelves had
\nthe unreachable website and no other company information!! I called the company
\nand they had changed the companies URL but had no other information on the web
\nsite listed on all their power supplies currently in the stores pointing to the
\nnew site or anything about the company! More to come on this issue later!<\/p>\n
Now the real craziness begins. I
\ntook the power supply home and of course was met with the same results as
\nbefore. The system would chirp quickly not even spin the system fans one
\nrevolution and quit! <\/p>\n
I then thought well
\nmaybe it was some other device but after isolating the system to its barest
\ncomponents just to see if the CPU fans would spin I thought I had either a
\nfaulty mother board or a failed CPU. <\/p>\n
A couple of days later I went and
\npurchased a new mother board & CPU along with memory. The new configuration
\npowered up fine with my power supply. Problem solved correct?? Well during this
\ntime I had decided to try and trouble shoot my old mother board again and see if
\nit was just bad memory since I felt maybe I needed to blow out all my part and
\nreseat everything and presto my original mother board powered up!! Ok I\u2019m out of
\na little money but happy. I started building up my old system in the case after
\nblowing it out with canned air. I then tried to power it back up and the thing
\nstarted cutting off on me again when I got into the OS. Then after a while each
\ntime it would cut off a little quicker.<\/p>\n
Now I made sure that everything was properly
\nconnected and seated in the case and in the respective connections and still the
\nsystem kept cutting off. I again started isolating components to determine the
\nissue. I then noticed that I had failed to clean one item and since I had the
\ncanned air I decided to correct this issue and buy me some time to think.<\/p>\n
I took out the CPU fan which
\nlooked like it had a fine layer of dust on it off the CPU. I looked at the CPU
\nand noticed that in the fins of the heat sync with the fan on top was more dust
\nthan I anticipated! I blew all of the dust out of the CPU fan and placed it back
\non the system. Surprise of all surprises the system came up and has not shut
\ndown since. This has only been 24 hours but it would not even stay up for all my
\nsystems to load when it hadn’t been powered up after the system was cooled down.
\nWhen not cooled down it would not even power up!<\/p>\n
Now I looked at the design of the
\nwhole CPU cooling apparatus. Basically the CPU fan is drawing air to cool the
\nCPU into the heat sinks and if any dust particles are in the air it was getting
\ntrapped against the CPU and motherboard! This is an Intel 3.2 GB P4 478 pin
\nsystem but I imagine this may happen to many other CPU\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Now I will build my AMD 64 bit
\n3200 system and move the 3.2 GB to one of my other systems as I said in the post
\nbefore eventually but now I can wait a bit and take my time and work on other
\nprojects.<\/p>\n
The lesson learned CLEAN and BLOW
\nOUT the CPU FAN otherwise it can cause your CPU to OVERHEAT!!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Well this was strange. My main system I use kept periodically shutting down for no apparent reason. I checked for the usual virus, what was running on the system at time of shutdown etc… There was no pattern to the … Continue reading