Hi - I hope someone can help me out. I built this system about a year ago with all new hardware. It has been extremely stable until about 2 weeks ago. The system is left on 24/7 without a hitch, and then all of a sudden I come in one morning and my monitors show the orange light at the bottom as if the computer went into hibernation. (and NO, I do not have my computer set to hibernate - even If I did, I should be able to bring the system back up without a cold-reset) The tower LED's shows that everything is on and working properly. No matter what I do I cannot revive it, so I did a cold reset of power, and it booted fine. This happened another time about a week ago and I did the same thing. I was meaning to try and fix this problem soon as it was getting frustrating. Today it happens again, only when I go reboot, All LED lights come on as usual but the system never enters POST or gives a system beep to signal everything clear as it ususally does. There is no video signal at all. I eleiminated everything from the system to where there was only the MOBO, CPU/Fan, and PSU connected to one another to try to get at the very least some sort of a beep to tell me what is going on. Well, I had no success - still no beep or POST. My suspicions is that one of the 3 above have gone out. So where should I go from here? Based upon the system mysteriously hibernating - which of the 3 was possibly beginning to burn up? MOBO - PSU - or CPU? which one should I try to replace first? Should I replace more than one at first?

System Info:
Athlon 2100XP processor
Leadtek K7ncr18g-Pro w/ on board video & Sound
Powermax 400 watt PSU
1G Corsair DDR Ram PC 2700
2 Western Digital HDD
Pioneer A06 DVDRW
LiteOn CDRW
I think that is about it. Let me know if you need any more info...

im no expert but i do know a pretty good amount and one of my previous computers did this.. it will work fine for a bit but its a slow decline, and eventually it will totally die, your mobo is on its way out, sorry to tell you but that is my opinion

Thanks Bret for the response. I was actually thinking the same. Do you think the MOBO could hurt the CPU as well in the process?

Does anyone else have anything to add??

Thanks for the help peoples!

One possibility is that the CPU fan quit and the CPU fried. A close visual inspection might be able to determine that.

Thanks Ken for the response. The cpu fan works fine though...

Does anyone else have anything to add??

Thanks for the help peoples!

digital things die an immediate death, analog things die a slow or sputtering death. I'd guess your problem to be the psu since its an intermittent problem.

Seems like quite a rash of PSU failures on this board today. That would be my guess. Plus, it's the cheapest and easiest thing to try first. johnoh is on the right track. The things that get flakey befor they die are the mechanical things. Hard drives, power supplies, cd roms, anything with moving parts. The electronic stuff goes quickly, for the most part. Anyway, try the power supply first. Good luck.

Thanks for your response - johnoh and BG. I took my PSU you out and had it tested locally. It checks out fine. So I guess it's down to the MOBO or CPU.

Anyone else with any ideas?
-j

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