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From: Al on 8 Feb 2005 22:48
On 8 Feb 2005 17:48:48 -0800, "James G" <MisterJamesGovan(a)gmail.com> wrote:

>The PC is a homebuilt AMD 1800+ with 512MB RAM and a
>SOYO Dragon+ MoBo. It ran beautifully for me for three years.

It could very well be one of the victims of the bad Taiwanese capacitors
fiasco. The time frame and the symptoms are just right. The forum at
badcaps.net does have some reports of Soyo Dragon+s with bad caps.

Just have her open it and look for bulging/leaking caps. Example photos are on
the referenced website. It's also the easiest diagnosis to perform :)


From: David Maynard on 8 Feb 2005 23:04
James G wrote:

> I recently built a new PC and, having no need for two machines, gave my
> old PC to a friend in another state. I packed the PC up myself and sent
> it via US mail. The PC is a homebuilt AMD 1800+ with 512MB RAM and a
> SOYO Dragon+ MoBo. It ran beautifully for me for three years.
>
> The problem, though, is that it seems to have during shipment developed
> an odd problem of rebooting itself. The problem is described to me like
> this: At odd times, the PC's screen will go totally black, then will
> reboot. The fans in the PC never go out, so there seems to be
> continuous power from the PS. Upon booting up Windows after one of
> these mysterious reboots, most times instead of going to the desktop,
> the PC will instead go to the "improper shutdown" screen offering the
> user to start in safe mode or start normally. Sometimes the PC will go
> in a loop of rebooting itself without getting to this screen. I've
> instructed her to try "start normally", but most times that doesn't
> work unless she chooses "safe mode" first, shuts down the PC, then
> restarts. Sometimes the PC will stay on successfully for an hour or
> longer. Sometimes the problem happens continually over a short period
> of time.
>
> It's a real shame, because this friend of mine really needs this PC to
> be stable more than anything, but she doesn't have any real PC
> troubleshooting skills and I'm not savvy enough to provide much
> over-the-phone tech support. But if I can't come up with a solution,
> I've basically given her a 20 pound doorstop instead of a computer. If
> I can't come up with some possible easy solutions, then I'm faced with
> the prospect of shopping for a PC tech in her area to make a house call
> and check it out. As fate would have it, she lives in a rural area,
> which might make that more difficult than it would be in a big city.
>
> So, any ideas? Does this sound like a problem any of you have had?
> Thanks!
>

Well, the biggest problem is no one with computer skills at the location.

Since the problem began after shipping the most logical guess is that the
jostling around disturbed one or more component(s) so I'd reseat
everything. I'd be most suspicious of memory sticks and the video card, but
it could be anything.

The other area of concern is the heatsink, since they're often heavy items
and prone to being jostled.

If it's actually a *detected* fault, with XP doing a reboot recovery, there
might be an entry in the event logs.




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