Hello…again. You’d think my computer woes would have been put on hold for a while, but it appears unlikely to happen anytime soon. Thank you for you patience and help yet again as I begin to start this one.

First thoughts, PSU problems. Now the details.

I came in this morning and my computer was off, odd I left it on last night. I boot it up, everything works fine. I leave for a couple hours and come back. Odd, the computer is off yet again. I hit the power switch, nothing. I check cables, all good. LED on mobo, lit up. I flip the PSU switch to off then on, hit the power switch and on goes the computer… yah! Until error message pops up:

Windows did not start because the file windows\system32\config\system is missing or is damaged (that is the translation from Spanish to English, I’m not positive on the exact words). Please boot from install disk and repair the file by pressing ‘R’ on the first screen.

As I’m reading through, off goes the computer. I pull off the side panel and LED is still on. Hit the power switch the computer starts to boot up and then cuts, again, same thing. I flip the PSU switch off then back on, hit the power switch and on goes the computer. Same error again but this time I hit a key and the comp begins to reboot then I get it saying there is a hardware problem and tells me to check the hardware monitor in the BIOS. I go for it and the +5V reading is in the red and fluctuating around 4.43V the +12V is in the read as well and is fluctuating around 10.43V. As I’m looking at it, off goes the computer. *sigh* I go through the same thing again all the way into the hardware monitor again and this time as I’m read it the computer makes 1 click sound and it sounds like a fan speeds up and the voltage jumps to 5V and 12V for the respective readings. Then it clicks and the fan sound slows down, the voltage readings go back into the red, it jumps up again with the same click and fan sound, jumps down and computer goes off. I’ve tried booting a few more times to see if it was magically hung up on something and now is cured, but the same symptoms exist.

The only hardware change I have made recently was swapping out the old GeForce MX4000 64MB AGP for a GeForce MX4000 128MB (because of the destroyed VGA port on another computer, I could only find the 128MB and decided I might as well use that in my computer). The computer worked perfectly fine for more than a week since that change.

Specs:
ATX PSU 230W (ViewTech VP-500)
ASUS P4S800 mobo
P4 3.2 CPU
2 DIMMS of 512MB DDR sdram
GeForce MX4000 128MB AGP card
DVD-ROM drive
DVD-R/RW drive
2 hard drives

What do you think, PSU problem? I guess if I had that little tool doohickey I could just check it and that would probably be the best thing to do, no? Well, let me know what you think. Thanks again for all the help.