Hi guys, hope you can shed some light on this for me.

New system build after psu took down my system, so have 600w OCZ psu. Intel i5 CPU with stock fan, gtx560 Ti graphics card, 4gb ram plus 3 hdd's and a DVD writer.
Posing up the CPU fan lasts about three seconds then shuts down. It does this a couple of times and then will boot up to windows. Great!! But once at XP I try and install drivers, etc and get BSOD.
I have stripped the whole thing down twice with the same problem...any ideas most welcome.

Cheers, Artois28

Is this the same mainboard and processor that was running when the PSU failed ? If so, could there have been more damage than just the PSU ?

Fred Wagner

Tested the HDD and RAM yet after the failed PSU?

Learning - A never ending quest for knowledge usually attained by being thrown in a situation and told to fix it NOW.

Thank you for your quick responses (never ceases to amaze me the spirit of the Tek Tips guys). I think I found the problem. I bought a gtx560 graphics card, replacing an ati card. When booting up I eventually replaced the ati drivers for nvidia. This, so far, has cured the problem. It's a guess guys but it's the only thing I've done differently and it's been up and running for over an hour now...

Thanks once again, you are all stars...

Artois28

That will do it, I would also run a CCleaner scan on the registry to remove any old links to the ATI software.

Glad you are up and running!

Learning - A never ending quest for knowledge usually attained by being thrown in a situation and told to fix it NOW.

Hi all (again)...
It appears as though I or my PC lied. Having switched it off, leaving it alone for five minutes I switched it back on to the same problem...now, I'm stuck...

Regards

Artois28

I suspect that when your original PSU died, it took something with it on the main board. (or the other failure may have blown a fuse in the power supply) That failed/faulty compenent may now be intermittent - failing when it warms up. Could be a circuit board trace, or a solder connection, or an IC. If you can't find it, consider a new main board vs the value of your time....

Fred Wagner

Thanks Fred,

Good suggestion, not sure if I posted originally that I had swapped the mb because of original problem. Could it be the stock Intel CPU fan not being sufficient? Not sure what else it could be...thanks for you advice though,

Regards

Artois28

Could it be a Fan problem ? does it screech or make other noises indicating distress ? Is it thermostatically controlled? If not, try running it from an external 12V source, with the rest of the PC powered off. If it still shuts down after a few seconds, you've found the problem. Also check the fan wiring - it might be that a connector isn't seated all the way, and heats up after a few seconds of carrying current.

Fred Wagner

Thanks again Fred, will give it a try.

Thanks again for your swift help...

Cheers, Artois28

I have had power supplies take out drives before also. I would make a basic BartPE disk, and remove the hdd, booting from the BartPE disk. Run some tests to see how it goes. If it appears, stable, add back one hard drive at a time, and do long tests on each. What is the blue screen stop code, and did you get a mini dump? Did something change as far as AHCI mode or sata compatibility in the Bios?

loacate and download Hirens Boot CD - contains a BartPE boot disk and lots of diags to play with and test yout rig.

ACSS - SME
General Geek

When you installed the new Mobo, did you redo the thermal compound on the CPU/Heatsink?

Learning - A never ending quest for knowledge usually attained by being thrown in a situation and told to fix it NOW.

thanks once again for all the suggestions, I am trying them one at a time. I did change the thermal paste on the cpu, something I have done (like you all) many times before so I hope I can disregard incompetence as the problem (Yeah I know, I'm shaking my head too...)
The thing I don't understand is that after a couple of quick cpu fan shut downs, it works beautifully...I'm typing away on it now again after an hour with no problems...
Is this just a fault I should live with - I can hear the shouts from here, so I'll persevere and let you know. (holding your breath in anticipation no doubt...)

Many thanks again

Artois28

Just in case the problem comes back - are you in an air conditioned environment, or not ? Could the room have been hotter when you were having the problems? Years ago I was in a big building, and the above ground floor were heated, but not cooled - in the summer we opened the windows. It got pretty warm sometimes - and the big-screen Tektronix workstation I used would get really squirrely on a hot afternoon - I had to just shut it down, and it would work fine the next morning when the room was cooler!

Fred Wagner

also make sure your Bios is not overclocking any parts /cpu/mem/pci bus.. etc.

if you load defautls in bios, and boot to safe mode does it bluescreen?

running the diags is always a good way to prove the hardware, you have lot's of good suggestions in all the posts.

__________________________________________________________
Find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life. - Confucius

Many thanks for the replies guys, everything is working as it should be with no errors or intermittent faults, don't know if it was a bedding in problem but all seems well (for now at least).

Once again thanks for the support

Artois28