power supply? heat?

OK .... probably my fault anyway ..... but ..... I cleaned up inside my tower ..... lots of fluff dust etc .

Now I have a major problem ..... first I had no power at all, then power but everything was flashing so I unplugged it. Then eventually after many attempts I got it booted ... it reset the bios? and then after several hours of running perfectly it crashed and the power supply started messing up again.

I can see and hear both the cpu and power supply fans working .... but could this be overheating? What should I check and what should I take note of in the meantime that would help diagnose the fault?

Pentium III 650, 250ram nothing special in there at all

VP

I think you may be jumping to conclusions here. There's nothing to indicate a cooling problem. You more likely knocked a cable loose while cleaning. I'd reseat the cables and any DIP chips.

Is your system speaker enabled? If so are you getting any beep codes? If so post your mobo/BIOS model and the code (ie - two short, one long, 3 long, 3 short, etc.)

Just curious why you suspect a heat problem - did you remove any heat sinks while cleaning?

Thanks for the quick reply, the only reason I thought about the heat was because it ran for hours without a problem then crashed....then when I hit reset it lost the power supply again. I thought maybe there was something that stopped the power supply if the fan wasn't working properly or something. I am now running it without the side panel so that I can check the fans if it starts to crash again.

I will check the chips etc are seated properly .... I already checked all the cables. As for bios beeps ..... there are none at all because it takes about 100 attempts to get the power on at all .... then it either flashes everything , keyboard lights, floppy drive etc (still no beeps) or it boots and resets the bios .... offers bios set up or set to defaults .... so far I have chosen defaults. When the computer normally boots it has a single beep followed a few seconds later by another single beep if that helps.

VP

ok - good info ....

It'd be nice if you replaced your mobo battery though. I'm not saying that it's the cause of your problem - it's just neccessary to rule it out in order to follow a troubleshooting path.

If you take the mobo bat to any battery store they should be able to replace it for under $4.

Thanks again ..... yes I will check out the battery and get a new one tomorrow hopefully (stores are closed here now).... probably due for a new one by now.

VP