Dell Inspiron 531 Random Shutdown

[hotwired007]

Hi All

 

just got this PC delivered, no os or anything and basically it keeps powering down for no reason and then not switching back on for a while and then if i leave it for a while and plug it back in it powers up as normal...

 

i've checked the pc and it doesn't seem to be getting excessively hot...

 

any ideas?

[PeterW]

The CPU fan/heatsink may have come loose in transit, you could pop the side off and try and wiggle the heatsink to see if you can feel any movement.

[hotwired007]

have tried that now... have also tried:

 

Disconnecting everything apart from power cable...

Internally disconnecting everything apart from mobo

re-seating all the components

 

STILL after afew mins disconnected will turn on again and then POST and then power off again...

 

disconnect mains and leave for 10mins... does the same...

 

When i first got it i was setting it up to install windows... i removed the RAID array and the started... go a bluie screen coz i forgot to disable RAID in BIOS, then restarted the installa nd it was going fine... formatting the HDD... came back was powered off and i pressed the power button no joy... left it for a little while.. plugged it back in and then it came on fine... started the install again... powered off before it even got to the blue install screen...

 

any more ideas?

[PeterW]

Are all the fans spinning (check the psu fan)?

[hotwired007]

yep... everything powers up fine and then it just switches off...

 

im trying it now with a single memory stick...

[hotwired007]

Right i've tried it with a single stick and it didn't work...

 

came back after lunch and reseated averything again put it all back together again planing on sending it back...

 

tried it again and now i've managed to get it to boot properly... so i wnt into BIOS reset to defaults rebooted... stuckin my memtest86 cd and its now happily running a memtest...

 

will see what happens after this now...

[hotwired007]

it went off again! :@

 

after doing some research (wikipedia) i found that the damn thing could have a 300watt PSU...

 

Spec: AMD AM2 Athlon X2 5000 (2612Mhz Dual Core)

2 GB DDR2 Hynix RAM

2x 250GB SATA2 WD HDD

Geforce 8600GT

 

Am trying a slightly more powerful 360watt PSU...

 

Basically i think the PSU was just kicking out coz he load was too much...

 

anyone else thinking allong the same lines?

[SYNACK]

Could be it as unless it was a very high efficiency PSU I would think that it would be under powered to run that graphics card along with 2HDs in a modern system.

 

You should be able to go into the bios and check the reported voltage levels in the system monitoring portion to see whether they are too far below the expected voltage. Anything more than 0.3V below the expected voltage and I would definatly replace the PSU as these should not drop that low especially when idle.

[hotwired007]

Well incase you was all wondering the PSU died today back at the Dell place... I managed to get them to send me a replacement... (Had loads of fun with that!)

 

THey sent me a new one BUT this had a much more interesting feature... It shut down as soon as the processor started doing anything intensive... I got windows installed and started doing some benchmarks before i found out the problem... Running some hardware monitors i found out that the processor kept going upto 100 degrees and then the system would just shut down... I checked the CPU cooler before hand it it was fine all cables attached and was fixed very solidly... So went back and tried again... 100 degrees and instant power off...

 

Was starting to get worried about doing damage to the CPU so i left it for a while to cool down and then i pulled the CPU Cooler out to look at the CPU...

 

FIRST PROBLEM: CPU Cooler was stuck to the CPU... The old thermal paste had dried out and pretty much superglued itself to the CPU...

 

Cleaned it off... Quick trip to PC World to get some compound - £10! (Rip Off! ) Reattach it all and run the bench marks again...

 

SECOND PROBLEM:

 

Similar issue apart from only one core was overheating... So i pulled it all again... this time removed the processor and cleaned it throughly... recleaned the cooler and put more paste and connected it all up again...

 

Have just run a stress test for 40mins - No issues

Have also completed a full 3DMark2001 Benchmark (26704 Points) - No Issues

Running 3DMark2003

Downloading 2005 and another new version to test...

 

Basically the moral of the story is: MAKE SURE YOU CLEAN BOTH THE CPU AND COOLER lol - I was in a rush at the time as the PC has to be ready for this afternnon...

[kr236rk]

hi

 

this post mirrored my own pc concerns although the causes might be light years apart?

 

had a lot of pc grief the past 48 hours with a Dell Inspiron 531 Vista [AMD 64 Athlon x2]. It seems the graphics card [Nvidia GeForce 6150] had driver problems and caused my pc to crash during a video editing session - and then crash repeatedly afterwards. a friend put me onto a 'driver fix' program which seems to have sorted the issue, but if i leave the pc to idle now i get an electronic 'click' and turn to face 'screen black', very similar to what was being discussed here?

 

this does not seem to be a crash because the harddrive pilot light is still active, but i have no visuals, certainly no screen saver: is the pc going into 'hibernation mode' perhaps?

 

wonder if it has reset itself into something like this because the resolution reset itself to a low figure - blanking out the monitor again - telling me that i was out of optimal settings - and i had to manually select the correct resolution (in Safe Mode) which restored the pc to relatively a-ok work mode.

 

but obviously 'screen black' concerns me since at times i do a lot of video editing and the screen folding on me during a lengthy video render would probably be a disaster

 

any ideas please? this is a seldom used pc so still relatively new: i would not have thought the x2 processor was overheating?

 

thanks

 

Ric