how can i tell if one of my components has died?

[razordog]

hello

basically, my computer shut down all by itself and i when i turned it back on, the windows screen would come up but then it would prompt me to boot into safe mode, if i pick safe mode, the computer just reboots over and over agains, and if I pick normal mode, the computer just shuts down

i've tried reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling windows ME and 98se but i can't run the install program, i'll get some error at the command prompt about failing to load system.drv or some other error message, then, after maybe like 20 tries, i finally was able to install windows on my hard drive but then when i rebooted, i got the same safe and normal mode thing that happened like above

i've reset the cmos jumper, i've taken out everything except the videocard, cpu, hard drive, floppy and cd rom and it still doesn't work, everytime i power on the computer i get prompted for safe mode, oh yeah, i can get into the bios

i have a 1.2 amd and the epox 8k7a w/256 ram, i've been running it for about 1.5 years no problem

so i'm thinking its my motherboard, and if it is, which one should i get to replace it?

thanks

 

[CurtCold]

Might be your PSU. Do you have another PSU that you can try, or at least test?

 

[Bovinicus]

The motherboard does sound like a likely culprit, but I would be willing to bet the PSU is the problem before the motherboard. Another stick of memory for substitution might be a good idea as well.

 

[Dufman]

its a good rule of thumb to check the PSU, try getting a fancy little tool that verifies that the PSU is in fact working (sorry i dont have the link).

My suggestions would be
1. IDE controllers on your board could be bad, try another IDE cable, try temp. swapping your HDD to your CDROM IDE connector on board.
2. Your harddrive could be BAD. get a drive diag, utility and see if the boot sector is corrupt. or you have a lot of bad clusters, try and scan disk the drive, make sure you do a surface scan!!! (I put my my MONEY on this ONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
3. Perhaps the heat is getting to your proc. and it is shutting down the system. go into the bios, and check the temp of your cpu. check the temp after 5 mins of it being on, the try and install windows, after that is done, check the temp again. (very unlikley that this is a problem)
4. Try new ram

i hope that helps you out a little!

 

[bgeh]

imo, its either the hard drive dying(try enabling smart to check it)
or lots of dust(dust traps heat, so your processor might be overheating if you didn't clean your system for a long time)
or the psu

 

[razordog]

thanks for all the advice

my system works now

what i did was clean the dust out of my case and i just took out my ram from the slot it was in on the motehrboard and stuck it in the other slot and everything works now

so i'm not sure if it was the dust or the ram but i'm happy

thanks again