Member Avatar for cteal39

I have a VPR Matrix P4, 512RAM, 1.6ghz PC (about 6 or so years old) and suddenly it starts to not come on when the power button is pressed. The problem is very similar to this one
http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread43766.html

My fans work though; I see the one inside turning and feel the air from the one in back of the PC. When I would press the power button, one light glows amber (what I always thought was the hard drive light) and my green light on my DVD burner lights up, but the CD/DVD ROM would not light up. The monitor would continue to be blank and the message that my monitor was working would come up. I checked as best as I could for loose connections and did not find any. I would then hold the power button down until the lights and fans went off, then press it again. After doing this 5-7 times, it would suddenly power up. Just this past Friday, I was unable to get it to power up at all. Saturday I read the thread and tried Nizzy115's suggestion: "hold the power button for about 10 seconds, then physically unplug the computer from the wall and hold the front button for another 10 seconds. Plug it back in and see if it works" It did work after I did this. On this thread though, it is not mentioned as to what this does to make it power up and what might be wrong. Today I had to shut it down because of thunderstorms and it would not start again until I did the same thing as above (by Nizzy). A blk screen comes up after doing this and a horizontal line blinks in the left corner. Just when I think it isn't going to load WinXP (Home Ed), it comes up with some more words on the blk screen that go by too fast to read and then the Win screen starts up. Any ideas what is going on??? From research, I have read motherboard, power supply, or power button. I checked the wires coming from the power button and they seem to be attached to the board tightly. I can upgrade just about anything in my PC, but have never had this problem and don't know how to install a PS or a mobo. I can follow most suggestions to troubleshoot it, but a few might be too complicated for me. Oh, and I had two quite new hard drives to go out about 6-8 weeks ago. They were mounted side by side and both were quite hot to the touch. I assumed they got too hot, but could this because of this new problem? The hard drives went out though BEFORE (like a month at least) this power button problem began to occur. How does Nizzy's suggestion cause it to power up? And why does that work? What is most likely to be the problem? I really need my PC! Thank you so much for reading!

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by comtech2000
Member Avatar for Serunson

Have you checked the connection between the actual button, and the connecter behind it? Might be worth a check. Also run an anti-virus/anti-spyware scan just to check for any nasties.

Member Avatar for cteal39

Yes, done that (checked wires) and they seem ok, didn't notice them loose and checked where they connect to the mobo too and all clear on virus and spyware as I use several of the popular spyware checkers listed in PC forums (Panda, Lavasoft Adaware, Spybot Seach & Destroy, McAfee) and ck frequently. Also, I visit the same tiny handful of sites (Yahoo email, BetterPhoto and that's about it).

Member Avatar for comtech2000

It could be a power supply problem which is causing the intermittent fault, see if a mate has got a spare PSU and try it, if the PC boots and runs properly this will be the problem if not try removing the memory if you have 2 sticks and putting one at a time in to see if any of the sticks are corrupt. you can download a free memory tester from Micro2000 if you can get on the net, good Luck

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