A homebuilt computer of mine has some kind of fault that causes it to shutdown suddenly. I'm not sure how to diagnose this problem.
A few months ago I had this computer working fine. Then at one point it began having problems coming out of sleep mode. Most of the time, after being in sleep mode, it would not wake (with a keyboard press), and the power button would do nothing. I could boot it up by switching off the power in the rear, waiting a couple minutes, switching it back on and then hitting the power button. I soon learned not to use sleep mode (running Windows 7) but to either leave it on or simply shut it down.
Still, this bothered me so I got a newer power supply. This fixed the problem entirely, so I was happy for several weeks. Just now it has begun acting strangely again. Sleep mode is again a problem as before, recoverable by powering off in back for a few minutes. But now after turning it on, the computer will frequently shut itself down by suddenly losing power, often within a few minutes of turning on.
I'm an experienced system builder, but I'm not sure what to try at this point. The only thing I can think of is that there may be a short that develops with a certain amount of heat. Is it a mounting/standoff problem? Since this seems to be related to sleep mode, I'm more suspicious of the motherboard than I am of other power-consuming peripherals. But it's not practical to replace the MB, CPU, and RAM just to test this theory until I have more confidence in it.
Any suggestions?
Many thanks,
Topher
A few months ago I had this computer working fine. Then at one point it began having problems coming out of sleep mode. Most of the time, after being in sleep mode, it would not wake (with a keyboard press), and the power button would do nothing. I could boot it up by switching off the power in the rear, waiting a couple minutes, switching it back on and then hitting the power button. I soon learned not to use sleep mode (running Windows 7) but to either leave it on or simply shut it down.
Still, this bothered me so I got a newer power supply. This fixed the problem entirely, so I was happy for several weeks. Just now it has begun acting strangely again. Sleep mode is again a problem as before, recoverable by powering off in back for a few minutes. But now after turning it on, the computer will frequently shut itself down by suddenly losing power, often within a few minutes of turning on.
I'm an experienced system builder, but I'm not sure what to try at this point. The only thing I can think of is that there may be a short that develops with a certain amount of heat. Is it a mounting/standoff problem? Since this seems to be related to sleep mode, I'm more suspicious of the motherboard than I am of other power-consuming peripherals. But it's not practical to replace the MB, CPU, and RAM just to test this theory until I have more confidence in it.
Any suggestions?
Many thanks,
Topher