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Dell Dimension 5150 Restarting
Hi all,
New to the Dell forums!
I have a 4 year old Dell Dimension 5150 that seems to be a bit poorly.
It has started to randomly restart it’s self.
There appears to be no rhythm or rhyme to the restarts, sometimes it will work for hours on end doing all sorts of wonderful things (IE, DVD writing, Norton etc) and other times it won’t even post.
When it won’t post it simply powers up, lasts about 2 seconds and then powers off then repeats the cycle till I turn the PSU off. When it powers off I mean it completely turns off, even the PSU fan stops for a second, it’s like the power at the mains goes for a split second then it has another go. I have tried the power supply at different locations and the problem remains.
I have reinstalled XP from the Dell Partition on the HDD, updated all the hardware that I can find, flashed the BIOS to the most up-to-date version and then fully updated windows. Had a look at the BIOS setting and I can see anything that would cause this to happen. I have also made sure that the “restart on error” function is disabled as well. Not even a BSOD to keep me company.
I have even re-seated the motherboard, RAM, graphics card and the CPU (using new thermal paste) even though heat doesn’t seem to be the issue!
The problem still remains and there still appears to be absolutely no common ground for each of the restarts.
I have brought a new PSU that is more than capable of running the system and it has not made a difference.
I really am at a loss to explain the cause.
If I can fix this then I am sending a beer to the poster who nails it!
RoHe
10 Elder
10 Elder
•
44.3K Posts
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April 16th, 2010 18:00
These can be tough problems to solve. Some things to consider:
Scanned thoroughly for malware recently?
How much free space is on the hard drive? And when did you last defrag it?
Reboot and press F12 before Windows (What version of Windows is this?) starts to load. Select Utilities partition from the F12 menu and run the extended hard drive and RAM tests. That may take quite a few hours. Make note of any error messages.
If RAM and hard drive pass all tests, reboot and and click Start>run
Type in: chkdsk c: /f
Click OK
Accept the offer to run chkdsk at next boot and then reboot. chkdsk will run before Windows loads again.
Open WIndows Event Viewer and click System. Look for any error messages around the time of a crash. That might point you toward the problem
When was the last time you replaced the motherboard battery?
You might want to uninstall the video driver and reinstall the latest version that's compatitble with your video card and version of windows. If necessary, go to the video card manufacturer's site (eg, ATI or nVidia) and download the drivers from there because Dell tends to be behind on video drivers. Uninstall the video card in Device Manager and reboot. Be sure to follow whatever instructions are provided to install the new driver, and never install a new video driver "on top" of an old one (eg, without removing the old one first).
Ron
EDIT: :emotion-22: here please!
cancelledorder
3 Posts
1
April 17th, 2010 00:00
Could be a cable connection,or a card that is not seated well try removing all cables and unplugging and reseating all cards again.
If this does not fix you may want to have the new power supply tested,a new one can be bad as well as an old one.