What the duck just happened with my desktop??!!

[Vyom]

Please do a memtest for a night.

I faced the issue again today. When I powered on the PC, it failed to start. Fans kept starting and stopping. I removed RAM and attached it again. It allowed me to boot then.

I am ready to do MemTest today night. Just wanted some more suggestion.
Will be using this tool: MemTest86 - Offical Site of the x86 Memory Testing Tool

What option do I select? Tests will take hours. So I want to save the report in the end. But the comparison chart shows free version don't have the ability to save results to disk. I don't want to loose the results of hours of test only because I don't have the paid version. Any suggestion?

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Did some reading up, and came to a conclusion that,
1. I should use MemTest86+ which is open source version of Memtest,
2. Should run it for about 5-6 passes and/or (7 hours, since I can't leave PC on, while I am away in morning )

Sources:
*www.wikihow.com/Test-PC-Ram-with-MemTest86
*superuser.com/questions/547822/how-many-passes-are-enough-with-memtest

 

[kARTechnology]

I faced the issue again today. When I powered on the PC, it failed to start. Fans kept starting and stopping. I removed RAM and attached it again. It allowed me to boot then.

I am ready to do MemTest today night. Just wanted some more suggestion.
Will be using this tool: MemTest86 - Offical Site of the x86 Memory Testing Tool

What option do I select? Tests will take hours. So I want to save the report in the end. But the comparison chart shows free version don't have the ability to save results to disk. I don't want to loose the results of hours of test only because I don't have the paid version. Any suggestion?

- - - Updated - - -

Did some reading up, and came to a conclusion that,
1. I should use MemTest86+ which is open source version of Memtest,
2. Should run it for about 5-6 passes and/or (7 hours, since I can't leave PC on, while I am away in morning )

Sources:
How to Test PC Ram with MemTest86 - 4 Easy Steps - wikiHow
memtest86+ - How many passes are enough with Memtest? - Super User

leave those and use MEMTEST86+ as you said, opensource.
USB Installer ->> *www.memtest.org/download/5.01/memtest86+-5.01.usb.installer.zip
and simply boot from usb, it will auto start scanning without any user interaction/keypress.
I'm not sure weather if it can save reports or not(I think it won't)

put it on at night, sleep in PC's room , wake up @ morning and see if any errors popped up.

PS: if your system is again looping fans on and off, clear cmos which will make it boot successfully.

My PC always stays in 24x7 and I sometimes use remote desktop connections from college

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Yeah but energy efficient chokes do nothing to filter the interference. I think an UPS or Power Filter would serve me better.

Elecronic choke is interference free compared to copper choke which make buzzing sounds(interference)
I have experienced them. CCTV cameras & mic catch interference from old copper choke tube lights(audio playback give back a errrrr sound) where as electronic T5 and LED lights do not distort the quality of the audio(clean)

I would say no ups in india has power filtering except few models of apc. others advertise but have no circuitry in them to filter/simply do not work.

Whenever i turn on my ceiling fan my PC turns on!!! this started happening after installing a cheapo USB mouse. before it was fine when using a logitech one. I use mouse click to wake my pc up.

 

[slashragnarok]

leave those and use MEMTEST86+ as you said, opensource.
USB Installer ->> *www.memtest.org/download/5.01/memtest86+-5.01.usb.installer.zip
and simply boot from usb, it will auto start scanning without any user interaction/keypress.
I'm not sure weather if it can save reports or not(I think it won't)

put it on at night, sleep in PC's room , wake up @ morning and see if any errors popped up.

PS: if your system is again looping fans on and off, clear cmos which will make it boot successfully.

My PC always stays in 24x7 and I sometimes use remote desktop connections from college

- - - Updated - - -



Elecronic choke is interference free compared to copper choke which make buzzing sounds(interference)
I have experienced them. CCTV cameras & mic catch interference from old copper choke tube lights(audio playback give back a errrrr sound) where as electronic T5 and LED lights do not distort the quality of the audio(clean)

I would say no ups in india has power filtering except few models of apc. others advertise but have no circuitry in them to filter/simply do not work.

Whenever i turn on my ceiling fan my PC turns on!!! this started happening after installing a cheapo USB mouse. before it was fine when using a logitech one. I use mouse click to wake my pc up.

Okay thanks dude. I'm gonna try install an electronic choke on the tube giving me problems.

 

[Vyom]

MemTest86+ wasn't able to make my USB bootable. So I had to resort to MemTest86. Anyway, so I completed all tests with one pass and didn't find any problem.
Looks like I will *have* to leave it for overnight.

 

[kARTechnology]

Okay thanks dude. I'm gonna try install an electronic choke on the tube giving me problems.

Try to get whole fitting changed to t5.
28w compared to your previous 40W and it costs around rs.350

 

[slashragnarok]

Sometimes errors are reported on Pass#5 & 6. So better to do 7-8 passes.

 

[isaac12345]

Sorry to hijack my thread back , but I need some advice on this.

Since the day I had the strange problem with my computer, I have also noticed random electricity drops. It happened the day before and tonight. The day before even the people living in our building on the ground floor had it. The day before I called Tata power to check whether its a problem from their side and they checked our meters and all the equipment there and said it was fine from their side. It could have been a problem from their backend when switching between equipments. And a certified electrician visited our house a week or so ago to check the mains supply and said that everything was ok. So now I am confused as to what the problem is,especially that i noticed recently that there is fresh sealen in my house? and what should I do about it? Is it a problem with my RAM, house electrical connections or with Tata Power? :S

 

[kARTechnology]

Sorry to hijack my thread back , but I need some advice on this.

Since the day I had the strange problem with my computer, I have also noticed random electricity drops. It happened the day before and tonight. The day before even the people living in our building on the ground floor had it. The day before I called Tata power to check whether its a problem from their side and they checked our meters and all the equipment there and said it was fine from their side. It could have been a problem from their backend when switching between equipments. And a certified electrician visited our house a week or so ago to check the mains supply and said that everything was ok. So now I am confused as to what the problem is,especially that i noticed recently that there is fresh sealen in my house? and what should I do about it? Is it a problem with my RAM, house electrical connections or with Tata Power? :S

What is that "strange problem"

 

[isaac12345]

What is that "strange problem"

Here's the description from my original post -

"Hi all!

Something very weird happened with my desktop yesterday evening!

While watching a video on youtube, my desktop abruptly switched off. Thinking it was a PSU issue, I switched it off from its own switch as well the plug socket from the back and switched it back on. But the computer would not even go into POST. What would happen is that the fans would come on for a second (no HDD spin) and then switch off. This kept repeating but it never went it POST. Thinking that my PSU had died, I unplugged the desktop from the extension board and filed a tech support ticket with corsair.

Now, coming to today morning, I remembered that I forgot to check the system from another socket. So I unplugged all the peripherals(keyboard,mouse,etc) from it and switched it to another socket and LO AND BEHOLD! The system switched on and booted up as normal. Suprised and weirded out, I then plugged it back into its original socket (which was from an extension board) and it booted up properly! Thinking it might be a problem with the extension board not being able to take the load of all the appliances plugged into it, I plugged everything back as normal and it booted into the OS! It even ran a 1080p HTML5 youtube video for 15 minutes. Completely weirded out I switched the system off and unplugged it from the extension board.

But now I am completely confused as to what happened?!

Can you please help me figure this out?

Here's my configuration -

Samsung Syncmaster 540N
Altec Lansing VS2321 2.1 speaker system
A Thompson cable modem and a Binatone wifi router

Desktop -
PSU - Corsair VX450W
Motherboard - Gigabyte P35 S3G
CPU - Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 2.2GHz running at stock clock speeds at the time of the incident. Sometimes overclocked to 2.5Ghz for gaming.
GPU - MSI 8800GT Factory overclocked
HDD - A Samsung Terabyte and a Samsung 320GB
Optical Drive - Samsung DVD reader and writer
Accessories - One large coolermaster cooling fan that came with the case plugged into the motherboard fan pins.
PS/2 Keyboard, USB Microsoft Mouse, Logitech HD webcam, the occasional Ipod shuffle or USB drive plugged in.

All of the above are plugged into an old Goldmedal GL225 extension board that has 4 sockets, one of which has both the modem and router plugged into it with a multipurpose plug. So in total there are 5 appliances plugged in. The extension board is itself plugged into a power socket."

 

[slashragnarok]

Sorry to hijack my thread back , but I need some advice on this.

Since the day I had the strange problem with my computer, I have also noticed random electricity drops. It happened the day before and tonight. The day before even the people living in our building on the ground floor had it. The day before I called Tata power to check whether its a problem from their side and they checked our meters and all the equipment there and said it was fine from their side. It could have been a problem from their backend when switching between equipments. And a certified electrician visited our house a week or so ago to check the mains supply and said that everything was ok. So now I am confused as to what the problem is,especially that i noticed recently that there is fresh sealen in my house? and what should I do about it? Is it a problem with my RAM, house electrical connections or with Tata Power? :S

What exact problem do you face?

 

[isaac12345]

Right!

So I called up a computer repair guy who took my motherboard for repair and got it back a few weeks ago. Unfortunately the problem is still there. The only improvement is that the computer restarts fully instead of cycling on and off again and again at POST. The guy didn't tell me exactly what he repaired but said that it was at 'the component level'.

I have called him again this time asking him to repair it again. I'll be pressuring him into telling me what he changed last time. Damn these repair men! If anyone knows any good computer repair shops in Delhi, please let me know. Thanks!

 

[$hadow]

^^There are plenty but you can't trust any.