In need of assisstance

[TheDarkKnight007]

Ok guys I am sort of new to the computer world, this is my first built computer. It has 2 sticks of 128 ddr ram, an ABIT K97A motherboard, a slow modem and everyones favorite windows 2000. The computer had been running fine from May till November. In November my computer all of a sudden was hit by this weird thing. It started out every once and awhile, the computer would just shut off, after a few minutes I could turn it on from the back and the computer would turn on and I would go on my way. But in December it increased to happening two or three times a day. In January I got another copy of win2000 and uninstalled and reinstalled not once, but twice. The problem still occurs. At the time the problem began I had one stick of RAM, but the problem has somewhat decreased as I have gotten a second one but still happens at least every other day and somedays it happens up till three times. Now there is even a "blink" as I call it as my computer will shut off for a second but come back on as if nothing happened.

WHAT I THINK COULD BE THE PROBLEM ...
#1 The power supply - the power supply often times runs hot to the touch but never really unsafe. I have checked the temp and it looks ok.

#2 the Motherboard - when I got the motherboard from a friend he said he didnt think too highly of it, and when I first put it in, it was very finicky about the DDR Ram that went in and had booting problems. Now I have heard that there has been problems with the board and certain brands of DDR ram. I have also heard ABIT no longer makes them, and I should upgrade anyway.

This problem has been happening for the last two and a half months now, and I have been to various forums trying to find help. I have run every kind of virus check and I have done everything I could think of but like I said im a little inexperienced here, if anyone could help or offer suggestions feel free and thanks in advance.

[John Prophet]

Welcome to the forum!

The Abits are great boards...is it a KR7A? (I think u had a typo)

maybe run a mem checker with just one stick in at a time

this is the one everyone raves about http://www.memtest86.com/




one other thing that comes to mind....look at the motherboard itself..see if any of the "capacitors" are bulged at the top.

The capacitors are little things shaped like miniature water towers, lol. They are supposed to be flat on the top....if they go bad the often "bulge" and get a rounded top....sometimes they also leak stuff out of the bottom..on occasion they "blow" all the way apart at the top.

here are some pics http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=195 the bulged one they show here is actually pretty mild.

another article, more pics http://www.feistworks.com/3comfix/

There is a long funny story about industrial espionage of sorts where some peeps stole the formula for the stuff inside the cpas but they got it wrong, lol...so then some companies ended up with the wrong formula....Abit was the only company to admit it had some of the bad formula in some of its caps

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY...eb03/ncap.html

I am under the impression that you can mail the board to Abit and they will fix it...of course you need to know that it is the caps first, lol..I dont think you can just mail the board and have them troubleshoot it.

JP

[Brainchild]

What kind of setup do you have,meaning the numer of HDDs,CD-ROMs,CPU and how many watts the PSU is.Could be that it just under powered.

[crystaldragon]

I've been through that set of symptoms my self. Bad power supply on the same computer. Not once but twice!!
Started out with random shutdowns that gradually became more frequent. Got to the point that I had to turn the power off on the power supply and leave it for about an hour before it would restart. Finally tried an old one I had and when it stayed stable I bought a new power supply and put in it. Six months later had to do it all over again.
All this time the psu never felt hot and the fan never made any noises or quit. It had to be a bad capacitor in the psu but it sure had me going for a while.
If you have or can borrow a spare psu try this. Pull the side off the case set the substitute psu on top and run the leads to the motherboard. It it stays stable you found the problem and all you need them is a screwdriver.

[ArcticFox]

Try replacing that thing with an Antec True430, it shouldn't dissapoint.