PC in endless reboot cycle 2

[amberlynn]

My son't PC is broken once again.
It's an Acer desktop (piece of crap). It's around 2 years old - but almost everything in it was completely replaced last year (new motherboard, PSU).
Now it's acting up again.
It started randomly restarting.
Then it stopped shutting down properly (if you shut down, it would just power cycle - without ever booting up, just on - off).
In order to get it to stop, he would pull the plug. As soon as it's plugged back in, without turning the power on, it starts it's power cycle, never getting to the point where you could enter BIOS or Windows, just a few seconds before shutting down.
My son discovered that if you waited til it was powering on, hold the power button in until it powered off, then quickly turn it on before it turns itself off, it will boot.
Unfortunately all of this has finally led to bigger problems (corrupt registry). I'm working on fixing that, but realize that I have to fix this boot issue first.
Any suggestions?
Amber

 

[goombawaho]

Smells of a power supply problem to me at first blush. Can you swap (beg, borrow, steal) a known good power supply in there to test as a quick and easy first step???

You don't even have to put the new power supply in the case, just open the side and plug all the connectors in with the power supply sitting on the floor.

Don't forget to plug power into NEW power supply (forgot that once myself while testing = dumb)

 

[G0AOZ]

What Goombawaho said...

Make sure the temporary replacement PSU has at least the same if not more Watts available than your original. What is the rating of the original, incidentally? 350W, 450W, 550W?

Try that first, then look at possibly dodgy front panel POWER or RESET buttons. The RESET you can leave off - the POWER button is just a momentary switch, so careful use of small screwdriver to short the relevant terminals on the motherboard should be good enough to get it started.

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[amberlynn]

That was the problem.
I would have tried this first, but since I had the same problems last year, and replaced the PSU right away - I assumed that wasn't it

Thanks!

 

[goombawaho]

That was a cheap power supply (or at least an unreliable one). What brand was it, just out of curiosity? Let's punish the poor performer.

 

[amberlynn]

I was too hasty in throwing it away - I'm not sure what brand it was!