Boot issues

[bobbi]

Hiya all, recently been having booting problems, getting pretty serious. I have a home built XP intel 2 duo,sitting on a gigabyte board, rammed with 3gb ddr2, dvd/rw, 2x160gb wd hd, 7950gt, tv tuner, 1xusb mouse 1xusb port used on and off, all running from a EZcool 650watt psu(not sure about quality).

Recently the HD's just started spinning down, sometimes 10 times or more in a couple of minutes. This could be with a intensive load or even when idle.
The system now sometimes stopped booting.
The power goes on lights blinking, the hds spins up, i can hear the dvd rom drive mechanism trying to calibrate repeatedly, all the lights flash at the same time but not boot. After about 15secs it switches off, and restarts again in the same loop.
HDD, mem, cpu, checked all Pass.
then after reseating all components and more failed reboots in finally boots, but Im not happy.
Im thinking its a psu issue. any ideas please.

 

[shortstuff_mt]

I think you're on the right track with suspecting that POS PSU as the culprit. That's the first thing I'd replace. You should replace it even if it's not causing your problems because a cheap PSU can ruin a whole system. How did you test the HD, RAM, and CPU? I highly recommend multiple passes of Memtest86+ if you haven't run it already.

 

[bobbi]

thanks for input.
I got a barts boot environment cd with utilities from a mate. when i could i ran memtest for about 12hours=pass.
hd with hdbench = pass.
cpu load = pass

I think i will replace psu, or get a friends spare to test with first. I shouldnt have risked the cheaper psu, i knew about the quality differences as i have a htpc with an antec 80plus (only 350watts tho), but cost more than the ezcool 650watts!

the ezcool came with the case, thought i will just run it, guess not a good idea.