oh no! Urgent help please!

[dannyaa]

I wasn't sure which category this belonged in, cuz I don't know the problem, but I hope someone can please help!

I have a 3 year old 1.2Ghz Athlon with an ABIT KT7A motherboard, 512mb RAM, two internal IDE hds.

Anyway, I powered down my computer a couple hours ago, which I usually don't do (it has been running for a very long time) because I thought I'd give it a chance to 'cool down' or what not, I had to run some errands. I came back home, hit the power button, the computer spins up, lights blink, but then immediately shuts down. Then it will not start again for like five more minutes, where it then does exactly the same things (starts to power up for 2 seconds, turns off and won't go for another 5ish). I unplugged/replugged everything, turned on and off the power strip, got the vacuum out and sucked out the fan of the power supply (without opening, just from behind). When I tried the 2-second power up again, I watched the fans and the both looked to spin fine. Everything else in the room powers up fine, and I have never had this problem before.

Does anyone know what could be wrong? Is the motherboard/cpu dead? Power supply on its way to being dead? It doesn't seem like it would be a mobo/cpu failure because remember it starts, but then I have to wait a few minutes until it will start for 2-seconds again. But I don't know.

Please help! And soon if possible, I have a huge video project for a client that I need to work on as it is due very soon!

Thank you so much!

Danny

 

[Crashman]

Probably the power supply tripping.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[endyen]

Crashman is probably right, but check the capacitors near the chip as well. If they look out of shape, or are leaking, that's your problem.

 

[Crashman]

Yes, well, bad capacitors on the motherboard can trip a power supply, but it seems like he would have had stability problems before it got that far.

Sometimes hard drives lock down, that can trip the power supply as well!

Or it could be the power supply has gotten too weak to power up the system.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[endyen]

It just sounds like an RC timer. The cap could be in anything (psu, mobo, graphics card, sound card, even modem) but that's where I think the problem is.
A capacitor might be able to hold a charge, even when it's failing. As soon as you try to put a charge to it from cold, is a different story.