I have been having trouble with my Compaq Desktop lately. I can start it up normally and have it running for around 30 minutes and then it just shuts down. I have cleaned it thoroughly inside. I must admit, it was dusty.
After the clean it still runs for about the same amount of time.
I have taken out the Memory Cards and the Graphics Card and cleaned their sockets and also the connecting edges, brass contacts. This has made no difference.
I have disconnected all my hard drives except the main O/S one, also the DVD roms.
After they were disconnected the computer actually ran for about 40 minutes before shutting itself down again.
My Graphics Card is roughly two years old.
Could it be my power supply is overheating and causing the problem, the CPU or even the Motherboard itself.
I have only the basic equipment at my home so I cannot do any fancy testing of these components myself.
I have only got the fan on the CPU and one in the power supply, do I need more fans to help keep things cool or what?
Any help is appreciated.
Brian
It maybe the power supply ,and of all the device it can be, the power supply is one of the easiest to change for troubleshooting
It is likely that some component is either overheating or is starting to fail as it warms up. That you could run the system for 40 minutes after cleaning it out is a good sign that this is happening. Is it the power supply, or other component? Well, as caperjack suggested, replacing the power supply with a known good one of equivalent specs is a reasonable place to start. If that doesn't work, then it is likely that your motherboard (or some component on it) is failing. This is often the RAM. Myself, I run a version of Linux that has good thermal monitoring software that tracks the temperature of the CPU and RAM in real time. When I do something like rebuild the kernel that sucks up a lot of CPU and RAM resources, the temperature of both CPU and RAM increase quite dramatically. I had a failing (due to overheating) RAM simm that this was able to help me diagnose.
After a lot of fiddling around with it using a spare power supply I finally got rid of all the bugs that I found.
Installed a new power supply this morning a no problems.
The old PSU fan was starting and then stopping a few minutes later, no wonder the overheating problems.
Thanks for the help and suggestions fellas.
Brian
your welcome
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