WEIRD customer problem, any ideas?

Well I have a Compaq Presario "5000" sitting next to me. I was called out this morning to go fix it, apparentelly it's been giving her troubles for some time. They were talking about how slow it was and such, I figured it would just be another typical spyware cleanup, however it wasn't.

When I arrived they informed me that it will randomly shut off. I figured that one of the massive ammounts of viruses and such would be doing it. So I started working on it in safe mode, never turned off on me. Then I went back and was scanning again in normal mode and such and it shut down. WTF.

So I figured why not and decided to format. Got the partition formatted and Windows was installing it's self. It shut down again. When it shuts down it totally turns off, however the power light is still on. Also when it shuts off, the button will do nothing I gotta pull the power cable and put it back in to restart.

So I tried to restart it and resumed setup, got almost done and sure enough it shut down again. I wasn't sure what to tell her becides it may be something hardware, and she let me take it with me since I didn't want to waste her time there.

So now it's behind me, i'm going to clean it out and pull the BIOS battery to let it reset and do a good (not quick) format on the drive to see what happens.

They told me this started after a storm, and the power got knocked out. There was a surge protector so I know nothing was fried but it was shut off from the loss of power. Seems like if something was damaged (PSU), it woulden't run at all.

Any ideas? Thanks

I wouldn't trust a surge protector if they are having these problems... and just becuase its not totally fried doesn't mean that the psu isn't broke....

Start by calling compaq... and if possible... hunt down the power strip manufacturer... and they could pay for it possibly.

Jdrake90

psu or motherboard. my guess is the former. try one you've got (if you have a spare)

Well I just found something interesting... started it up and took a good look around, PSU fan isn't spinning (but PSU is on).

I'm goin to try another PSU.

On older compaq's if the PSU fan is not spinning it will shut the machine down. Old servers had this feature. If you put another fan in there you should be ok. I just fixed one of these. I took a new fan and attached it to the wires from the old fan contact in the PSU (the plugs were different) and that should work fine.

I wondered if it was some type of protection but why would it wait around for sometimes over an hour to do it? I'm wondering if it just detected it's self getting past the "critical temp" and shut it's self down, that would be why when I first got on it stayed on for a whial (machine was cold) but after turning it off and back on the time kept getting shorter.

The fan looks like a 60mm fan and I don't have any around so I just figure a new Antec PSU would be the safest option. Thanks for the help guys.

On the server that I worked on it had a custom compaq plug to the MB. Sometimes the fan would spin sometimes it wouldnt. Was a real hasle to find.

grats on getting it up and running.

What happened when you swapped the PSU?

Haven't been able too since all of my PSU's are 20pin and it wants a 24pin.

the 20 pin shoudl still work
ALso get a multimeter and check the voltage

My friend had a simular problem and i insisted it was his 12V as it was only putting out 11.69V he didnt belive me untill i swaped it and all stability returned.

Also load fail safe setting in the bios just to be safe

If its the compaq plug I would be wary about using a newer PSU. I would just swap the fan in the PSU. you could also go to HP.com and look there. I was able to get a PS from them for the server. They now keep that onsite for a spare.

a 20 pin will power a 24 pin fine, i do it on my 440bx board. and it sounded like a heat problem, i suspected dust and crap in the HSF fan. i can see why it would only do it when it was at a certain load, like safe mode will use alot less resources and stuff compared to installing, spinning uop the cd, loadin cpu, transferrin to and from ram and hard drive... could heat up the psu and cause it to choke.

So how would I stick a 20pin PSU in there without an adapter?

Compaq computers use a propriatary PSU, It may be good, most likely not. I have about 10 Compaq servers and the PSU is the most likely problem. First thing to check though is the voltage regulators that are normally attached to the motherboard next to either the ram or the cpu, I dont remember the exact location atm. they are plugged into a slot that looks *almost* like a floppy connector. Tthose things will burn out as fast as the PSU and dont cost as much. (and it is still a lot.)

I went and hunted down a Compaq Mobo to show the example of the Regulator:

They are located next to the CPUs and if they have a problem, the computer will
not boot, or will act strangely.

This motherboard has nothing of the sort, it all appears standard like every other mobo i've seen (aside from the ram slots being on a slight angle).

And i'm not sure how it could be a propriatary PSU since it's a standard 24 pin connector, standard 4 pin connector for processor power, and standard connectors for everything else. Remember this is just a home PC 1.8ghz P4 no server or anything.

I saw 'Presario' and thought 'Server' but it would be wise to double check the PSU. Compaq comps, even the home ones have given me a run for my money (hatem now)

Check for dust bunnies. The processor fan possibly isn't spinning!

Right away I thought PSU, but who knows it is a Compaq so I can imagine something crazy Lol. I'm sure he's fixed it by now.

in the old compaq servers, if the fan was not spinning the system would shut down.