5punk

Well having been working fine for a while, I came back to my PC last night to find that it had frozen up. I'd been streaming stuff from it to my xbox earlier and had left it sweeping some stuff for an hour or so, but when I came back the screen and mouse were both off and nothing worked, so I pressed the reset button. The computer reset, but then a few seconds after powering up again, it powered down. Then up. Then down. Then up. Then down. Repeat ad infinitum.

On closer inspection, it looked as though the reset switch had stuck in, so I opened the front of my case, and the switch had indeed slipped and stuck, so I returned it to its normal position and tried again. Same thing happened still.

Next step I tried is to disconnect the front panel buttons from the mobo altogether in case the switch was physically broken, but when using the power switch on the mobo to start up, it still just keeps resetting. Therefore I have hit the wall of my limited knowledge, and have no idea what to try next. I won't have time to try dismantling the computer to the bare minimum and seeing if it's any of the other hardware for a while, but in the meantime, any of you have any bright ideas?

Mobo is a Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3P Intel P45, any other info that would help?

I had this the other month, twas a dead Mobo unfortunately, replaced it and all is good again.

Well at least that would be a straightforward solution I guess. What do I need to do to confirm the diagnosis?

Also, if it is the mobo, what's a good replacement these days? Cheaper the better really, but doesn't look like that exact model is readily available any more.

Strip everything out and try to boot on a bare board, this will cut down on the time factor. If it starts up ok try it with just the cpu in, generally a restart loop is caused by one of those two things being shagged.

HereComesPete wrote:Strip everything out and try to boot on a bare board, this will cut down on the time factor. If it starts up ok try it with just the cpu in, generally a restart loop is caused by one of those two things being shagged.

That ^

Then if they work, add things back in one at a time, RAM, Graphics card etc. but it probably will be either the Mobo or CPU.

also try poking the ram back in, that sometimes helps

The only other suggestion I have is to verify that your power supply is good, as an overheating, overloading, or just plain bad PSU can cause reboots to happen. I'd say this is unlikely considering the symptoms, but if stripping it down to the bare minimum needed to POST doesn't help it's worth a look.

Huge success! I ignored the computer for 2 days, then muttered some dark curses at it, prodded the RAM, and now it works again. Now to buy a new HDD and bung it in quickly to back everything up. That's brightened up the day a bit.